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Easter Surprise Little Girl This Easter |
Rabbits
have been important symbols to people of many faiths for millennia. From China
and India to Africa and the Americas, people have raised their eyes to the Moon
and beheld a rabbit. This isn't an accident or coincidence. For many ancient
peoples, rabbits symbolized fertility and those people would have recognized
that the rabbit gestation period fit the lunar cycle almost perfectly. Hence,
the bunny in the Moon.
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Adorable Easter Bunny Express |
The
image may be based in symbols of fertility, but the stories that have grown
around it often have a sacrificial theme. For instance, the Aztecs say the god
Quetzalcoatl put the image of the rabbit on the Moon in remembrance of her
willingness to sacrifice herself so that he wouldn't starve. This story is
similar to the Japanese tale "Tsuki no Usagi." The stories told among
Cree, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Chinese communities all share sacrifice as a
central theme similar to these stories.
Sacrifice
is also central to the Christian story of Easter. And the Moon dictates the day
on which Easter falls each year. Perhaps linking Easter with a rabbit is not so
surprising when you look at it that way. That
hardly explains how bunnies came to deliver Easter eggs.
Like
the rabbit, the egg has a long history of religious symbolism. Most often an
egg is a symbol of birth, or rebirth, which is ideal for Easter. But birds, not
rabbits, lay eggs. So why should the Easter bunny bring Easter eggs rather than
an Easter bird of some kind?
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Chocolate Therapy, Easter Gift With A Bunny |
The
root of this practice lies in the legend of Eostre or Eastre, the Teutonic
goddess of dawn, who was known to transform herself into a four-footed creature
of renowned fertility. Her story somehow gets conflated with a 19th Century
tradition of giving Easter gifts. At the time Christians in Germany and Hungary
often put effigies of rabbits in the baskets of eggs they gave as gifts. Eggs
were a luxury that could not be consumed during Lent so the baskets may have
represented a great feast appropriate to celebrating Easter and the
Resurrection. As to how the story got to America, that credit (or blame) goes
to the Pennsylvania Dutch. They may also have brought the tradition of rolling
eggs on the ground in a kind of race perhaps intended to remind believers of
the stone that sealed the door to Jesus' for three days which when rolled away
revealed the Resurrection.
Daffodils in crystal or glass vases on each end of your mantel bespeak the coming of Spring. Tie a wired chiffon ribbon in a soft spring hue in a bow around each vase for a nice touch.
Find unique gift baskets for new neighbors, 
