Pagan Origins of Easter and The Easter Bunny

 

         -------------Happy Easter----------------

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                    🐰Hope everyone has a great Good Friday and an awesome Easter!🐰

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Like many modern Christian holidays, Easter  and the Easter Bunny can be traced back at least in part too older pagan traditions and celebrations .

 

The festival of Ostara / Ēostr

 

                                                

                                                         

                                                      

                                                        Goddess Ostara/ Easter...

 

In most Europe countries , the name for Easter is derived from the Jewish festival of Passover.

In Greek the feast is called Pascha, in Italian Pasqua, in Danish it is Paaske, and in French it is Paques,"

But in English-speaking countries, and in Germany, Easter takes its name from a pagan goddess from Anglo-Saxon England who was described in a book by the eighth-century English monk Bede.

Ostara otherwise known as Ēostre, is the Germanic  goddess of spring and dawn and fertility. 

 

On the old Germanic calendar, the equivalent month to April was called “Ōstarmānod” – or Easter-month.

Ēostre is attested solely by Bede  in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), the pagan feasts in Ēostre's honor, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal Month  a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

 Historic linguists  have also traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn   Ausṓs from which descends the Common Germanic divinity from whom Ēostre and Ostara are held to descend.

 

 Scholars have also  linked the goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names in England, and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century CE referring to the matrona Austriahenae.


There are several theory's that connect Ēostre with records of Germanic Easter customs  that alsoincl hares and Egg's. Particularly prior to the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae and further developments in Indo European studies, there have been several debates  among some scholars about whether or not the goddess was an invention of Bede. Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism.

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During pre-christian times, people have celebrated the equinoxes and the solstices as sacred times

The spring equinox is a day where the amount of dark and the amount of daylight is exactly identical, so you can tell that you're emerging from winter because the daylight and the dark have come back into balance. The cycle of birth, death and rebirth...."People would plan out their whole life according to the patterns of nature.

Once Christianity took root across Euroup, the Easter period became associated with the resurrection of Christ.

In the first couple of centuries after Jesus's life, feast days in the new Christian church were attached to old pagan festivals,

Spring festivals  were to celebrate the end of winter and the retrn of warmer seasons, the main theme was new life and relief from the cold of winter this later became connected to the resurrected of Christ after the crucifixion.

 In 325AD the first major church council, the Council of Nicaea, determined that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

This is why the date moves and why Easter celebrations are sometimes referred to as "moveable feasts".

There's a defined period between March 25 and April 25 on which Easter Sunday must fall, and that's determined by the movement of the planets and the Sun.

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 Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny 

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Ostre is a goddess of fertility her main  animal symbols are bunny and eggs. 

Rabbits are  known for their high rate breeding as such they have traditionally symbolized fertility, and eggs represent new life.

 

It’s believed that decorating eggs for Easter dates back to at least  the 13th century. 

 People began decorating eggs and eating them as a treat following mass on Easter Sunday after fasting through Lent.this is still something that happens in modern times, especially in eastern European countries like Poland.

During the 19th century Russian high society also started exchanging ornately decorated eggs—even jewel encrusted one's on Easter.

                                  

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                   -----The Easter Bunny-----

 

 

According to some sources, the Easter bunny first arrived in America with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania..

 

The first association of the rabbit with Easter was a mention in  the "Easter hare"  a book by a German professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau published in 1682.

He recalled a folk story that hares would hide the colored eggs that children hunted for, which would indicate that at least as early as the 17th century, decorated eggs were hidden in gardens for egg hunts.

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Von Franckenau taught anatomy, chemistry and botany in Jena and became a professor of medicine at the University of Heidelberg.

  In his "On Easter Eggs" essay, which he published around 1682, he considers ancientpagan symbols of life and fertility connected with religious traditions. 

 On the Easter bunny, he says this ---in Alsace, and neighboring regions, these eggs are called rabbit eggs because of the myth told to fool simple people and children that the Easter Bunny is going around laying eggs and hiding them in the herb gardens. 

So the children look for them, even more enthusiastically, to the delight of smiling adults. 

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These legends were preserved and improved upon by the Pennsylvania Dutch, who referred to the Bunny as the Oschter Haws. 

Beginning in the1680s, children around Germantown Pennsylvania would build nests out of hatsand bonnets, place them in the yard, or out by the barn and, on Easter morning, they would be found filled with colorful eggs. 

The decorated hats and bonnets eventually evolved into Easter baskets.

These custom's later spread across the U.S. and the bunny’s Easter morning deliveries would later  include chocolate and other types of candy and gifts, while decorated baskets replaced nests, children often leave out carrots for the bunny in case he gets  hungry from all his hopping.

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The Easter Bunny  or  Easter Rabbit 

This magic mythic bunny is believed to have  originated  among German Lutherans, the "Easter Hare" originally played the role of a judge(similar to Santa and his list), he would  determine  whether or not child's behavior  had been good or bad in at the start of the season of Eastertide. 

The Easter Bunny is sometimes depicted with clothes. In legend, he carries colored eggs, candy, and sometimes even toys in his basket  to the homes of children, another  similarity he shares   Santa Claus, they both bring gifts to children on the night before their respective holidays.

 

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Bunnies aren’t the only animal traditionally associated with Easter in every country. Some identify the holiday with other types of animals like foxes and even the  cuckoo birds.

whatever you believe in bunny fox or bird i hop you all have a great Easter weekend.

 

                      :) Happy Easter :)