My Easter is spent eating too much candy, wearing a pretty dress, & going to church. I know a lot of people have a fancy easter dinner, but to me it just isn't a holiday if i have to crack open cookbooks. It's always been this way, & I've never questioned it.
Until this year, I got to thinking, why does a very large bunny leave kids candy? I can understand Santa Claus, but a very large bunny breaking into your house is just a little scary. So I went to wikipedia & came up with this:
Easter in North America & Canada: The article starts of talking about the Easter I just described above & includes the classic quote:
The Easter Bunny's motives for doing this are seldom clarified.Finally, someone at Wikipedia has a sense of humor. I'll be sure to ask the Easter Bunny tomorrow exactly what his motives are. I read about the coming of Eostre which is a supposed pagan tradition that goes as follows:
According to the story, the goddess Eostre found a wounded bird in the snow. To help the little bird survive the winter, she transformed it into a rabbit, but the transformation was incomplete and the rabbit retained the ability to lay eggs. In thanks for its life being saved, the rabbit took the eggs and decorated them and left them as gifts for Eostre.
This legend sounds plausible enough, only one problem, it didn't appear anywhere before 1990, & has since then gained popularity, so where has this ancient ritual been before now. It still doesn't explain why the Easter bunny breaks into houses & leaves them candy. I will just have to make up my own legend. Not even my overactive imaginations can come up with a good theory for this. Does anyone know why we have an Easter Bunny?
2 comments:
Interesting. My 6yr old genius was just asking me about this today. Which is funny because I've been telling him that I've been putting together his Easter basket all week. But his mind is already hanging onto the myth even when I debunk it right to his face.
The little chocolate eggs look like large rabbit poop (when they are unwrapped). Maybe chocolate eggs are a reminder of what a child will find if he or she lets a rabbit in the house for a while.
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