The Goddess of Easter and the Origin of the Easter Bunny
It's a well-known fact that during the expansion of Christianity, the church absorbed a lot of pagan local traditions and festivals, adding Christian polish to add a sense of legitimacy. While the pagan origins of some holidays are laughably obvious, like Christmas, others are way more obscure. There is a lot of debate about the pagan origins of Easter, and of a possible goddess whose name inspired the holiday’s name in Anglophone lands, Eostre. Eostre, Ēostre or Ostara is a goddess of the spring, dawn, and fertility, and some of Easter’s seemingly non-christian elements, eggs, and rabbits, are often said to be associated with her. There’s only one problem. THERE IS A FIERCE DEBATE IF SHE EVER EXISTED AT ALL. I will explain more.
The first mention of Eostre is in the 8th-century treatise De temporum ratione, "The Reckoning of Time", written by Bede, a Northumbrian monk in 725. The treatise is about the cycles of the sun, moon, and the Zodiac, their relations with the workings of ancient calendars, and the ways they can be used to calculate dates, especially the date of Easter. In the chapter De mensibus Anglorum, "The English months", he describes indigenous names of months in Pre-Christian England. One of these months, Bede writes, was Ēosturmōnaþ, the month of the goddess Ēostre:
“Eostur-monath, who is now interpreted as the Paschal month, was formerly from the Goddess of those who was called Eostre, and to whom they were celebrating their feasts;”
Because there is no documentation of her in pagan sources at all, over the centuries, several scholars came to doubt Bede’s claims. A popular theory was that Bede completely invented the goddess. Others doubt these claims, arguing that as a Father of the Church in a relatively recently Christianized England Bede would have no reason to fabricate a goddess and that the names of the native gods would be hardly extinct in his lifetime.
Jacob Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm, more than fairy tale collectors, were philologists and cultural researchers interested in reconstructing Germanic culture, theorized in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie that the Anglo-Saxon Eostre must have been a local version of a more widespread Germanic goddess, whom he named Ostara, arguing that her name would have been preserved in the Old High German name of Easter.
“We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ôstarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart (temp. Car. Mag.). The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG remains the name ôstarâ ... it is mostly found in the plural, because two days ... were kept at Easter. This Ostarâ, like the [Anglo-Saxon] Eástre, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.”
Notice how speculative he sounds. He then continues:
“Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the Christian's God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter and according to popular belief of long standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy... Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing ... here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great Christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess.”
Again, notice how there is nothing concrete here, no strong evidence, only speculation.
But what about her association with the Easter Bunny?
Adolf Holtzmann in his 1874 book also titled Deutsche Mythologie speculated about the already-popular German tradition of the “Easter hare” associating it with the goddess.
“The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba.”
The popular legend about the origin of the Easter Bunny associates him with the goddess Ostara, saying that he was her sacred animal and that she transformed him from a bird into a rabbit, and that’s why a rabbit that lays eggs becomes associated with Easter. The problem is that the oldest source of this strange tale is from the late 19th Century. Stephen Winick, writer and editor at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center since 2005, traced versions of the story back to the June 8, 1889 issue of the journal American Notes and Queries, page 64:
The Hare and Easter –Whence comes the legend of the Hare in connection with Easter?
In Germany and among the Pennsylvania Germans toy rabbits or hares made of canton flannel stuffed with cotton are given as gifts on Easter morning. The children are told that this Osh’ter Has laid the Easter eggs. This curious idea is thus explained: The hare was originally a bird, and was changed into a quadruped by the goddess Ostara; in gratitude to Ostara or Eastre, the hare exercises its original bird function to lay eggs for the goddess on her festal day.
In his post about the subject, he notices that no source was cited. He then argues that the whole story was probably the fruit of Adolf Holtzmann’s intense speculation when he wrote:
“Uebrigens ist doch der Hase ein Vogel gewesen, da er Eier legt….”
(By the way, the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs….)
From there the stories about the rabbit/bird creature became more elaborated. This version was printed in Ohio’s Fulton County Tribune for April 13, 1922:
Pretty Legend Which Connects the Hare With the Symbol of the Awakening of Life.
It appears from a very ancient, but little known tradition, that the rabbit, or rather the hare; sacred to Ostara, was originally a bird, very possibly the swallow. The goddess finding her winged messenger was not fitted to endure all toils and climates, transformed her into a brisk, quick-footed little quadruped with long ears, a warm furry coat, and no tail to speak of, ready and able to summon belated spring from wherever she might be lingering, and to guide her safely, even among the icebergs of the frozen north. Thenceforward the hare, the emblem of fertility, was known as the friend and messenger of the spring goddess; and in memory of her former existence as a bird, the hare once a year, at Easter, lays the gaily colored eggs that are the symbol of the awakening of earth and the renewal of life. This is the mythological explanation of the connection of Easter eggs and bunnies, but there are many other stories telling why the sportive hare is responsible for the bright-hued eggs at this spring festival.
So, did Eostre or Ostara exist? Probably. There is indeed a connection between her and her rites and the name of the holiday in German and English-speaking countries. However, most of the popular stories and legends about her are fabrications, no older than the 19th Century, the fruit of scholars desperately trying to reconstruct a pre-Christian Germanic Goddess and then co-opted by German nationalists trying to create a national identity. Ostara is propaganda. There is no evidence that she turned birds into rabbits or had a carriage pulled by rabbits or anything like that. The real goddess probably will remain a mystery forever.
So, what was the real origin of the Easter Bunny and the Easter Eggs?
Unfortunately, way more mundane than a hidden pagan goddess.
Dyeing and decorating eggs goes as back as pre-Christian times. Christianity associates eggs as symbols of rebirth since the first century via the iconography of the Phoenix. The early Christians of Mesopotamia adopted the custom from Persian traditions, staining them with red coloring to represent the blood of Christ. Several other traditions of decorating eggs go into the mixture, including the pysanka, of polish and Ukrainian cultures, and then, the modern Easter Egg is born.
The Easter Bunny started as the Easter Hare in South-west Germany. The Easter Hare was essentially Easter Santa Claus, bringing toys, candy, and dyed eggs only to the well-behaved children. The oldest recording of this custom was in 1692 by German physician and botanist Georg Franck von Franckenau's De Ovis paschalibus, 'About Easter eggs'. Hares were frequently seen in gardens in spring, during Easter, so the connection made sense. Easter cards and toys make the character popular during the 19th Century. German immigrants brought the custom to the United States, where it becomes our Easter Bunny.
