I read that engraved, decorated ostrich eggs dating
back 60,000 years have been found in Africa. I also read that for thousands of
years, Iranians and other cultures have decorated eggs at Nowruz, the Iranian
New Year that falls on the Spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. My
favourite example of ‘significant’ eggs is their appearance in the magnificent
Etruscan murals in Italy, a legacy of the Etruscan settlements there.
Rabbits have been much-loved too. The stories that
they are prolific little breeders seem to be well supported by respectable
online data. And because rabbits and hares have large families of young in the
spring, they too have become for us symbols of spring, birth and fertility.
It appears to have been a universal trend.
Evidently, in Aztec mythology a god referred to as Two Rabbits represented
fertility, parties and drunkenness.
Where did the Easter bunny come from? Well it seems to
have been, at first, an Easter hare, with written references dating back to
1682 in Georg Franck von Franckenau’s work De
ovis paschalibus. The Easter hare, I read, originated among German
Lutherans as a creature that played the role of a judge, evaluating whether
children were good or disobedient at the start of Eastertide. A canny device!
The hare apparently brought presents to the good ones.
There are no Easter eggs or bunnies in the Bible.
The New Testament section of the Bible –which tells us about the life and
ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and the foundation of the Christian
church – has nothing whatsoever about them.
Although Christians enjoy a ‘choccy’ Easter egg as
much as anyone, it seems clear that Easter eggs and the Easter bunny really
come from our human love of symbolism, charming ritual and enticing things to
eat. We seem to have brought eggs and rabbits into the religious festivities
just because we love them.
It also seems that in various ways, Church tradition
has indulged us in this. I came across a prayer for the blessing of Easter eggs,
and church traditions around beautifully coloured and decorated eggs. I can
still remember enjoying an Easter breakfast at home with coloured boiled eggs –
thanks to red food colouring – that were much more interesting to eat with
toast fingers than plain old, straight-from-the-carton eggs. A bit of
symbolism? We love it.
The name Easter. I found quite a bit about this,
too, while I was looking up eggs and rabbits. It seems that in most of the
non-English-speaking world, this major Christian feast is known by names
derived from the Greek and Latin Pascha.
The English word Easter came into use with, or maybe
about, the time of the venerated Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede (673-735AD) in
England. It appears to derive from the Teutonic goddess Eastra (this is a
debated spelling) and from thence way back to Queen Ishtar or Semiramis in
ancient Mesopotamia. Maybe the name Pascha
has something going for it.
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