So what's with the rabbit and the eggs?

The Easter Bunny (also called the Easter Rabbit or Easter Hare) is depicted as a Leporid bringing Easter eggs. Originating among German Lutherans, the Easter Hare originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behaviour at the start of the season of Eastertide. The Easter Bunny is sometimes depicted with clothes. In legend, the creature carries colored eggs in his basket, candy and sometimes also toys to the homes of children, and as such shows similarities to Santa Claus or the Christkind (Christ child), as they both bring gifts to children on the night before their respective holiday. The custom was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Franckenau's De ovis paschalibus in 1682 referring to a German tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs for the children.

So goes one Christian explanation. Who knows?

I like the pagan (or neo-pagan) Ostara story, too.


Ostara, the Goddess of Dawn (Saxon), who was responsible for bringing spring each year, was feeling guilty about arriving so late. [Must have been a year like we have been having in the Midwest!] To make matters worse, she arrived to find a pitiful little bird who lay dying, his wings frozen by the snow. Lovingly, Ostara cradled the shivering creature and saved his life. 

Legend has it that she then made him her pet. Filled with compassion for him since he could no longer fly because of his frost-damaged wings, the goddess Ostara turned him into a rabbit, a snow hare, and gave him the name Lepus. To honor his earlier form as a bird, she also gave him the ability to lay eggs (in all the colors of the rainbow, no less), but he was only allowed to lay eggs on one day out of each year. 

Eventually Ostara flung him into the skies where he would remain as the constellation Lepus (The Hare).

Ostara allowed the hare to return to earth once each year, but only to give away his eggs to the children attending the Ostara festivals that were held each spring.