According to several local people, this spring is not a particularly early one for our part of the world. There have been years when this area has been frost free from the first of April. However, we did have a touch of frost a couple of mornings ago. It wasn’t heavy enough to threaten the plants that we’ve set out on or porch or to pose any danger to early plantings or the daffodils and tulips that are already up, but there was definitely frost on our deck when i got up. With all due respect to my many midwestern friends who have been digging out from underneath holy week blizzards this week, it is definitely spring around here. The grass is green and I have to mow. The song birds have returned and the geese and swans are heading north. And in our neighborhood, wherever you go you see rabbits, lots of rabbits, chasing one another around beneath the bushes. Yesterday when we took our walk, there were a lot of rabbits scurrying to hide as we walked along the edge of a birch forest on our way to the beach.

Our grandson who lives in South Carolina attended an Easter Egg hunt yesterday. Our great niece, who lives in New York has one to attend tomorrow. Our grandchildren here don’t seem to have connected with any local easter egg hunts, but I’m sure that there are plenty of them around. The reason I bring up Easter Egg hunts is that I confess that I don’t understand the connection of Easter and rabbits. Why is it that Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus by telling stories of rabbits hiding eggs?

The egg part of the story is fairly easy to trace. Since around the time of Jesus, Jews have incorporated eggs as part of the passover observance. The boiled eggs were dipped in saltwater and eaten to begin the formal part of the meal in many observances dating back to Roman times. In the Christian church, early Christians in Mesopotamia dyed eggs in the the period after Easter, a 50-day season called Eastertide. This practice was adopted by Orthodox Churches and from there spread to Western Europe. Eggs represent new life and rebirth. Most scholars believe that the ancient custom of coloring eggs dates back to pre-Christian spring rituals and observances. This custom was adopted into Christian Easter celebrations.

Rabbits, however, are a bit more tricky. Certainly there are ancient symbols depicting hares and rabbits that are much older than Christianity. Such symbols appear around the globe, including in places where Christianity was late to appear. The three hare symbol, which depicts three hares running in a circle with their ears touching to form a triangle, appears in many medieval churches in Europe, but it is a symbol that appears in non-Christian settings as well. There are examples of this symbol in the Dunhuang Caves in China, a Buddhist holy site created in the sixth century AD. It is theorized that the symbol was part of first millennium trade. The symbols were likely featured on objects that were bought and sold and exported along the Silk Roads linking Europe with Asia. The symbol is believed to imply prosperity and regeneration. I suppose it is possible that the Easter Bunny derives from an ancient Buddhist symbol.

Rabbits do appear in the Bible, with mixed attitudes. In Deuteronomy and Leviticus, in passages about dietary laws, they are referred to as impure animals. But rabbits appear in Psalms and Proverbs as animals with some intelligence, though often condemned as being weak.

Ancient texts from non-biblical sources, such as ancient Greek and Roman writers, often depict rabbits as fertility symbols. Aristotle noted the speed with which rabbits reproduced. Pliny the Elder suggested that both male and female hares could produce babies. He was wrong in that observation, but it seems that the idea of associating spring and fertility with rabbits is an ancient one.

Rabbits appear in historic art both as symbols of purity and as symbols of boundless sexuality. Titan’s “The Madonna of the Rabbit” ( 1520-30) portrays a white bunny as a symbol of Mary’s celibacy. Pisanello’s Allegory of Luxuria (1426) shows a rabbit that symbolizes lechery. It appears that medieval artists had mixed images of the role of rabbits.

Then there are all of the stories of rabbits as tricksters. Many indigenous tribes of North American including the Michabo and Manabush have myths about rabies as tricksters. Similar tales are found in Central African tribes. Some of the tales with African roots survive in American stories of Br’er Rabbit, a hero of cunning. In the United Kingdom there are tales of witches transforming into rabbits and hares. And generations of American children grew up with Buggs Bunny cartoons, in which the rabbit always outsmarts the farmer. I don’t think, however, that we think of the Easter Bunny as having much in common with Buggs Bunny.

There is a theory about the origins of the rabbit as an Easter symbol that is based on the writings of the Venerable Bede (673-735 AD). In those writings, an Anglo-Saxon death named Ēostre was accompanied by a rabbit because she represented the rejuvenation and fertility of springtime. Her festival celebrations occurred in April, and it is commonly believe that through Ēostre we have acquired the name of Easter. Perhaps her rabbit sidekick joined Christian traditions along with her name. The problem with this theory, however, is that Bede is the only source that connects Ēostre and Easter. It seems likely given the similarity of names, but it is impossible to find a corroborating source, meaning that the single-source bit of information will always remain a bit suspect.

I guess that this journal post is a bit like Alice in Wonderland, following a white rabbit, but never catching it. Rabbits have been seen as sacred, as crafty tricksters, as symbols of chastity and as symbols of superlative fertility. The bottom line is that I don’t know how we came to have adults dressed up as rabbits hiding eggs for children to find. It is a rather strange tradition when we think of it. Rabbits are mammals. They don’t lay eggs. At best we are handing our children and grandchildren a mixed metaphor.