Have you ever wondered what Easter has to do with a rabbit that lays eggs? Do bunnies even lay eggs? How did the theory about the bunny and the egg get started? What made Easter happen? Where did it come from? In today's article, we'll look at some of these questions.
Easter traditions include bunnies, chickens, and coloured eggs. We want to know what eggs and rabbits have in common today. How come the chicken isn't laying coloured eggs?
Easter wasn't always a religious holiday. In fact, it started out as a pagan festival. The Nicean Council didn't make it a religious holiday until 325 AD.
We have to go back to the beginning of Easter to understand what its symbols mean.
Legend says that there was always a festival in early spring to mark the end of winter and the start of spring. This celebration took place during the first full moon after the spring equinox. Estre was the goddess of children and springtime, and she was also the goddess of fertility.
Many pagan religions had the same festival, but their fertility goddesses were called different things. She was called Ishtar, Ashtoreth (which the Old Testament talks about), and Eostre. Even though their names are different, the similarities between them point to the same goddess.
She was a goddess of birth and growth. Babylonian legend said that a huge egg fell from heaven and was taken care of by doves. So, Ashtoreth, Ishtar, or Eastre came into the world. Baal, or Bel in the Celtic language, was the name of the god of fertility.
The egg is a sign of the fertility god in the real world. The goddess is linked to the hare. Together, the fertility season is brought on by a male god and a female goddess.
The egg is a sign of the beginning of life, or how life starts to grow. People often gave gifts of coloured eggs to mark the start of spring.
It makes sense that the hare would be a sign of fertility. The hare is a creature that comes out at night and is a little different from the cottontail rabbits that we think of when we think of Easter.
What makes a hare different from a rabbit? Well, we've already said that hares are active at night. Hares also come into the world with fur and eyes that are wide open. They are already ready to jump. On the other hand, bunnies are born without hair and without eyes. They have to stay with the mother until they can eat on their own. Bunnies run, hares hop. Since rabbits are more common than hares, they became the Easter symbol.
Rabbits start having babies when they are between 3 and 5 months old. The gestation period is 28 days, which is the length of a lunar cycle. There can be anywhere from 3 to 9 bunnies in a litter, but the average is 4 bunnies.
Bunnies have a lot of babies, so it makes sense that they are a big part of the Easter celebration in the spring.
In the story, Eastre is said to have had a beautiful, big bird. One day, she used magic to turn it into a hare. That's why it builds a nest and lays eggs in it.
The first time the Easter bunny was talked about was in Germany in the 1500s.
As we've already said, eggs were a sign of rebirth. They were both given to each other to mark the start of spring. The egg is a symbol of new life, purity, and fertility.
People think that eggs make men stronger. It makes sense that eggs would be a big part of the fertility festival.
An old story says that during the spring equinox, you can stand an egg on its end. This seems to have something to do with how strong the sun was on that day. This has been shown not to be true. Any day of the year, you can stand an egg on its end. It is not the power of the sun that is important, but the skill of the person who stands the egg.
Eggs were also used to cure the "evil eye," which is also interesting. People thought that the evil eye was a curse that would kill all living things. It was said to kill trees, stop animals from giving milk and mothers from nursing, etc. To get rid of the curse, you always had to use an egg.
So now we can see how we got the Easter rabbit and coloured eggs.
I'd also like to look at why it's common to eat ham at Easter and how the festival of Eastre and Easter became linked.
"Easter" in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 1987, says that eating ham at Easter was a common European and American custom because the pig was seen as a sign of luck in Europe before Christianity.
Germans used to think that pigs were signs of good luck. People thought you were lucky if you had a pig to feed your family because things were hard.
People probably keep their money in piggy banks because of the luck of the pig.
One of Noah's descendants, Nimrod, is said to have married his mother and become a great king. After he died, his wife or mother said that he had become a "sun god" and that his name would be Baal. People worshipped him as a god of childbirth, and he encouraged sexual sin. Ishtar, his wife and mother, got pregnant and had a son named Tammuz. Tammuz was killed by a pig. She decided that since a pig killed her son, pig had to be eaten on this particular Sunday.
People who follow the Jewish faith don't eat pigs, which is an interesting fact. God said it was a terrible thing to eat. When they celebrated Passover, they ate lamb, which was a sign of their freedom. Some Christians might say that eating ham at Easter is a terrible thing.
There were problems because the festival of Eastre and the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus happened at the same time. Christianity was too serious for Pagans, so they didn't like the idea of it. The early church thought that if it used some of the pagan symbols and icons in Christian celebrations, it would make it easier for pagans to become Christians. Converts from paganism to Christianity found the change to be helpful.
Because both Eastre and the Resurrection of Jesus were celebrated at the same time of year, the Nicean Council decided that the holiday would be called Easter instead of Eastre and would be held on the first full moon after the spring equinox.
And that, my friends, is the story of how Easter came to be.
