Do Rabbits Lay Eggs?

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At the risk of being taken out back and once again thrashed by the Christian readers, I find Easter to be an interesting holiday. Because I love to study the origin of things, the Easter Bunny, has always intrigued me.

All through my life, and up until probably just a few years ago, I too happily celebrated Easter Sunday with most of this country. In fact, I still help with the obligatory Easter egg hunt, and Easter Bunny basket purchases and placement. It’s also one of those times where you feel that you should attend church, even if you do not go on a regular basis.

Along comes my curiosity and WHAM, it all goes right out the window.

As I have discussed in previous articles, early Christians had a struggling religion. They did not have the prominence that they now enjoy. I have also shown how many Christian holidays and symbols were once, and still are, pagan holidays and symbols. It seems in order for Christianity to grow, it had to pretend to be part of the pagan celebrations.

In the olden days, people were killed for their beliefs. Actually, killing people who do not believe as you do is still going on in some parts of the world!

Let’s start by taking a general look at the modern Christian celebration of Easter. There are sunrise services, Easter egg hunts, and this weird thing about the date being moved all over the calendar. I don’t feel I need to go too deep into the Christian slant on Easter, because we have all grown up with it and lived the lie for so long we can recite it by heart.

Now don’t start writing me hate comments, the lie is on the symbolism, I’m not slamming the resurrection of Christ. Lighten up will ya?

Easter is celebrated as the resurrection of Jesus. All of the symbols of Easter have meanings that link it to the resurrection, but I have always wondered, Why a rabbit that lays colored eggs? What the heck does that have to do with the resurrection of Christ? Once I did some digging, the reality became obvious, and Easter is no longer such a mystery to me.

When early Christians wanted to celebrate Passover and the resurrection of their savior, they once again did so by adopting pagan symbols and holidays to cover their tracks and to prevent themselves from being drug through the streets and crucified.

Pagans are big on nature worship. After all, it is common practice in early religions for people to create gods and goddesses out of things they did not understand. Heck, in those days they didn’t understand very much, and even when they began to figure things out, the religions were established and the fanatics would guard the symbols and religions...well...religiously. People would be afraid to go against a religion, even if it began to seem somewhat silly.

Many religions of the world worshipped the sun. Indeed, almost any religion you study has some form of sun god that they would pray to. After all, they knew how important the sun was, and never wanted to make it angry. Pagans were no different. They worshipped the sun in many ways. Again, to keep this short you can Google sun god worshiping and read on it for years.  Rah!

Part of the Christian adaptation of pagan rituals was the sunrise service. This is clearly a leftover from the pagan worship of their sun god. It’s interesting to note what the Bible has to say about sun worshiping, which can be traced to the very god that was part of the pagan holiday.

"So He brought me into the inner court of the house of Jehovah; and behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east. And He said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger..." (Ezek8:16-17)

This in itself makes you wonder what is going on here. Are the inmates running the asylum now?

What about the name of the holiday? The term Easter is derived from the Saxon goddess of fertility who was called Eostre or Eastra. It is said that the goddess had a bird who she turned into a hare (the rabbit link came along later), and this is why the Easter Bunny lays eggs. Eggs are a huge fertility symbol in many religions. Now through the years people have had many off-shoots of this tale, for example the Germans have a story that their equivalent of the Easter Bunny is magical, and that’s why it lays colorful eggs for the children.

So here we go again. Celebrating Easter, with all of the trappings that honor the goddess Eastra, it is probably a bad thing to do as a Christian. Last thing I checked the Bible pretty much forbids the worship of all things that are not God. This includes idol worship and false gods.

Based on this, the entire holiday of Easter should be shunned by Christians, yet they embrace these trappings willingly because of tradition. Sure they have changed the meanings to fit their view, but when you get to the meat of where it all came from, it’s the worship of a sun god and a fertility goddess from the world of the pagans!

Okay, so we now know where most of these strange traditions come from that make absolutely no sense to most normal Christians. Do you feel at least a tiny bit silly yet?

Why the heck does Easter move all over the place as far as dates are concerned? If it’s the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus shouldn’t it be celebrated on the actual resurrection date? It turns out that the date Easter is to be celebrated on goes back to AD 325 when Emperor Constantine decreed that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. How’s that for specific?

It’s amazing how things like the date of Easter were decided so long ago and since then we have all just went, “Okay, why not?.”

I’m almost certain that many of you will read this and get downright upset with me on the information here. The intent has not been to abuse the holiday, but to try and shed some light on all of the seemingly out-of-place symbols of this Christian time of year. 

Are you mad?  Then go ahead and you explain to me why a rabbit delivering eggs is part of your celebration?

I have purposely left a ton of things out, just because most of it is commonly known, and the rest can be researched yourself if you really want to learn more on the topic. There is a certain length I try to keep my articles in, and this one is already running over the mark.

So today go out and celebrate life, fertility, spring, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No matter how you celebrate, or what you worship on this day, you now know where this egg-laying rabbit came from.

Happy Easter!