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There is a kind of more-than-a-rabbit involved in human cognitive evolution, many of our spiritual traditions, and even, perhaps, the moment-to-moment functioning of our intellect… and I suspect these topics are related to our familiar holiday — if not in precisely the ways we might ordinarily imagine...

According to the Christian Faith which claims to be the dominant spiritual paradigm of the nation in which I exist and write, Easter is a celebration of the Resurrection of a person who was ‘also God’, named Jesus Christ. Some believe this person to be ‘the son of God’, others, to be ‘God, in Man’, and others The sum totality of God. Some believe him fictional, mythical, or a mesh of reality and myth about ‘a regular but unique person’ who may have actually lived. For most, this is question of faith, and experience rather than science or lists of comparative qualities. The stories of these events and people(s) are what we have. And the versions we have, are not theirs, but ours. They are accretions, perhaps celestially guided in the embodiments they come to express, but still, they are accretions. Even were this not true, our own languages are accretions, and thus the essential device with which we examine our artifacts, stories and knowledge in general is changed dramatically from the places in our cognitive and experiential history as a species where such recordings and expressions of human belief and experience arose.

The game of the Easter Egg hunt had an obvious resonance for me as a child who loved riddles and had already swallowed a variety of insoluble examples. The metaphor was not lost on me that the universe around me and the Easter Egg hunt were similar in ways the holiday didn’t portend and the adults generally overlooked, or seemed to. I could see that answering any question — including what is the source of questions? — was like the game. In my family, adults crafted and hid clues. One followed them until a rather secret treasure was revealed. And then, if wise... beyond.

I remember thinking one day as I looked at a clue beneath a tree, that the tree was a clue to a greater treasure. I am not certain I have ever had a more accurate thought in my life.

Pertaining to questions regarding Easter, Rabbits, and Eggs, we find such expositions as this one, from www.lhmint.org:

“Rabbits and Bunnies: Rabbits are popular during Easter time because they are a reminder of spring and the new life that is abundant during springtime. They were the favorite animal of the spring goddess Eastre. The Easter bunny has its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore. The Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known and they served as symbols of the new life during the spring season.

The bunny as an Easter symbol seems to have its origins in Germany, where it was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s. The first edible Easter bunnies were made in Germany during the early 1800s. These were made of pastry and sugar.

The German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s introduced the Easter bunny to American folklore. The arrival of the “Oschter Haws” was considered childhood’s greatest pleasure next to a visit from Christ-Kindel (‘Christchild’) on Christmas Eve.

The children believed that if they were good the “Oschter Haws” would lay a nest of colored eggs. The children would build their nest in a secluded place in the home, the barn or the garden. Boys would use their caps and girls their bonnets to make the nests. The use of elaborate Easter baskets would come later as the tradition of the Easter bunny spread throughout the country.

Eggs: For many years people have used eggs to symbolize rebirth and abundant life. Throughout Europe it has been customary to give colored eggs to friends and family at Easter. Christians were forbidden to eat eggs during Lent. They were brought out in splendor on Easter Sunday. They had, in the early centuries of Christianity, been associated with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In order to dye red and golden eggs, one boiled them with red or yellow onion skins. Other colors were obtained by boiling or soaking the eggs in various herbal concoctions. In other places the eggs were painted or covered with gold leaf. Today, of course, we also have candy eggs. Whatever our custom, eggs serve to remind us of the abundant new life offered to us through the resurrection of Jesus.”

Noticing that Easter, a supposedly Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ is named after a goddess who loves rabbits is, at best, a troubling thought for the average christic theologian or conservative evangelist. Yet what does it actually mean that the Christian faiths accrued artifacts from ‘non-christian’ religions? When we discern that certain symbols or celebrations were adopted or integrated into the devotional story and calendar, what do we most commonly think? One of the apologies we hear from scholars is one of a Christian church struggling to gain a foothold in a still-largely-pagan culture, and this is likely at least partially true. Yet the western implementations of Christianity are, by and large, theophobic — they tend to openly critique, damn or despise the spiritual symbols and beliefs of other faiths, and this is perhaps even more true of pagan or earthCult faiths. It’s possible this is something like a bad taste in the mouth, left over from the compromising integrations of symbol and celebration in the Church’s early history — but there are other undiscussed features of these relations between modern faiths and ancient faiths which profoundly reward our explorations.

I have grave difficulty imagining how they would explain why, in our American celebration of Easter, there is this metaphor about a white rabbit hiding ‘special eggs’ of many colors, thus creating the game of their finding and — in many cases, the joyful ritual of consumption that follows. I believe I have some insight into this unique ritual, and its metaphors, and while the stories of a germanic birthplace for this relationship may well be in part true, those stories have even older sources, and they are sources that are still alive in the world — they are not mere archeological or sociocultural artifacts existing without reason. Nor, as is popularly supposed, are these stories ‘mere play’ — they were designed to preserve something, and those somethings were both real in human experience, and important, or they’d have never been so generally or popularly codified..

I wonder, however, how precisely is it that eggs remind us of the resurrection of Christ? These sorts of tidy sayings are commonly deployed, and rarely explained. I fully believe in the ability of this unique artifact to remind us of things, perhaps even resurrection, but I need a little bit more to go on. Let’s face it, rabbits don’t lay eggs. In fact, rabbits don't concern themselves with eggs, in general. Thus we can see that we are in the presence of a very strange sort of rabbit, and an unknown kind of egg.

Here, we find a little bit more to go on:

(from: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/8149/egg.html)

“The Decorated Easter Egg

The egg is nature's perfect package. It has, during the span of history, represented mystery, magic, medicine, food and omen. It is the universal symbol of Easter celebrations throughout the world and has been dyed, painted, adorned and embellished in the celebration of its special symbolism.

Before the egg became closely entwined with the Christian Easter, it was honored during many rite-of-Spring festivals. The Romans, Gauls, Chinese, Egyptians and Persians all cherished the egg as a symbol of the universe. From ancient times eggs were dyed, exchanged and shown reverence.

In Pagan times the egg represented the rebirth of the earth. The long, hard winter was over; the earth burst forth and was reborn just as the egg miraculously burst forth with life. The egg, therefore, was believed to have special powers. It was buried under the foundations of buildings to ward off evil; pregnant young Roman women carried an egg on their persons to foretell the sex of their unborn children; French brides stepped upon an egg before crossing the threshold of their new homes.

With the advent of Christianity the symbolism of the egg changed to represent, not nature's rebirth, but the rebirth of man. Christians embraced the egg symbol and likened it to the tomb from which Christ rose.

Old Polish legends blended folklore and Christian beliefs and firmly attached the egg to the Easter celebration. One legend concerns the Virgin Mary. It tells of the time Mary gave eggs to the soldiers at the cross. She entreated them to be less cruel and she wept. The tears of Mary fell upon the eggs, spotting them with dots of brilliant color.

Another Polish legend tells of when Mary Magdalen went to the sepulchre to anoint the body of Jesus. She had with her a basket of eggs to serve as a repast. When she arrived at the sepulchre and uncovered the eggs, lo, the pure white shells had miraculously taken on a rainbow of colors.

Decorating and coloring eggs for Easter was the custom in England during the middle ages. The household accounts of Edward I, for the year 1290, recorded an expenditure of eighteen pence for four hundred and fifty eggs to be gold-leafed and colored for Easter gifts.

The most famous decorated Easter eggs were those made by the well-known goldsmith, Peter Carl Faberge. In 1883 the Russian Czar, Alexander, commissioned Faberge to make a special Easter gift for his wife, the Empress Marie.

The first Faberge egg was an egg within an egg. It had an outside shell of platinum and enameled white which opened to reveal a smaller gold egg. The smaller egg, in turn, opened to display a golden chicken and a jeweled replica of the Imperial crown.

This special Faberge egg so delighted the Czarina that the Czar promptly ordered the Faberge firm to design further eggs to be delivered every Easter. In later years Nicholas II, Alexander's son, continued the custom. Fifty-seven eggs were made in all.

Ornamental egg designers believe in the symbolism of the egg and celebrate the egg by decorating it with superb artistry. Some use flowers and leaves from greeting cards, tiny cherubs, jewels and elegant fabrics, braids and trims, to adorn the eggs. They are separated, delicately hinged and glued with epoxy and transparent cement, then when completed, they are covered with a glossy resin finish. Although the omens and the mystery of the egg have disappeared today, the symbolism remains, and artists continue in the old world tradition of adorning eggs.”

We can see that this egg is a sort of holophrase, a metaphor which ‘means many things’. In our infancy, we used such phrases to refer to a variety of classes of things, usually things of personal importance or emotionally charged import. So it is not really a specific egg we are talking about, it is instead a metaquality of the metaphor of the egg. Additionally, it is a special instance of this metaphor, unique to specific cultures and celebrations.

We find this interesting and related document here (at defunct site):

The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1890

Hillard's article reveals that Easter and its customs have ancient and nearly universal origins, roots which were concerned with the most basic aspects of life. Our friend the Easter Hare (or Bunny, as you prefer) and his cart of eggs are borne of those roots. To know how this myth became associated with Easter requires that we examine Easter's association with a number of ancient symbologies.

Lunar Aspect

Easter is not really a solar festival, but rather one of the moon. The name Easter comes to us from the Saxon Eostre (synonymous with the phoenician Astarte), goddess of the moon. From the most ancient times, this goddess was the measurer of time. Her name as we know it (moon) comes from the Sanskrit mas — from ma, to measure — and was masculine (as it was in all the Teutonic languages).

Although this seems to suggest some confusion of sex, we can assume from the earliest mythologies that the deities were androgynous and sex depended upon the relationship to causes, whether active or passive. Since the measurement of time was an active process, the full moon was considered masculine.

According to an ancient document1 the moon as measurer of our days was chosen over the sun, since it seemed most natural to adopt a system that harmonized both the cosmos and humanity. The most likely choice was manifest in the cycle of the moon and the physiological phenomenon of mother and child. The lunar month of 28 days (four weeks of seven days each) gave 13 periods in 364 days, equivalent to the solar year of 52 weeks; thus the method of measuring by lunar terms. (And here we can make a connection between the female estrus and the goddesses Eostre and Astarte.)

How, though, do these revelations about our lunar measurer relate to the Easter Bunny or, more appropriately, the Easter Hare?

A clue to the answer is found within the paintings and fables of artists and storytellers of the Far East. These artists often painted the moon with rabbits racing across its face. The Chinese, in particular, have represented the moon as a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar.

The rabbit’s association with the moon is partly explained by two stories. In one Buddha places him there as payment for a favor in which Rabbit voluntarily gave himself as food for one of Buddha's hungry friends. In another, a rabbit, with nothing else to offer a hungry, weary Indra, jumps into a fire, cooking himself for the deity (a timeless example of humankind's self-serving fables). Out of gratitude, Indra placed the rabbit in the moon.

If we consider the phases of the moon in its waxing (masculine) and waning (feminine), and accept the notion that the moon at full intensity is the Destroyer of Darkness or, as Hillard says, “sign of new life and the messenger of immortality,” we can appreciate the honored position to which the rabbit has ascended.

A number of explanations account for this hare/moon symbiosis. One is that the hare is nocturnal and feeds by night; another is that the hare's gestation period is one month long. And, it was believed that a rabbit could change its sex—like the moon. Other stories in Sanskrit and Hindu connect the rabbit to the spots on the moon (related to the story above); to stories of hares dwelling upon the shores of the moon; and as mortal enemy of the lion (sun).

Egyptian Eye Opener

A more important connection can be found exclusively within the hare, who unlike the rabbit is born with his eyes open. The Egyptians called the hare Un, which meant open, to open, the opener. Un also meant period. Thus the rabbit became a symbol for periodicity in both the lunar and human sense of the word. The hare as "opener" symbolized the new year at Easter; and fertility and the beginning of new life within the young.

Now that we've made the connection of the Easter Hare to the moon and procreation symbolism we can see his connection to the Easter egg, which also has ancient but more obvious symbolic roots. However, the fairly recent pairing of the hare and egg is largely a product of artistic license and image appropriation, introduced to this country just before the turn of the century by European confectioners. Adhering to common older customs they used the celebrated Easter eggs to make cakes in the image of hares and gave them to the children.

Loss of Myth

Today, there is little, if any, cultural awareness as to the origins of popular myths such as the Easter Bunny. This lack is due to the proliferation of imagery, caused by the mechanization of the image making processes and to the marketplace use of popular imagery to sell products. The ancestors of our Easter Bunny and a host of other traditional symbols are now just so much flotsam and jetsam, awash in a sea of imagistic excess.

Entering another spring—another Easter—we might reflect on this loss, since our myths developed out of a real need to pass along information and instruction regarding the essential inner realities of human life.

Notes
1. Regarding its Christian heritage: in 325 A.D. it was decreed by the council of Nice that “after that date, Easter was to fall upon the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox; and if said full moon fell on a Sunday, then Easter should be the Sunday after.”