Easter: eggs and rabbits
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This morning, as is my wont, I stepped out on my stoop to test the weather. Across the street, I saw children running around picking up eggs that had been hidden in the grass here and there and delightedly putting them in the baskets they held with one hand. These eggs were colored, all right, but made of plastic, not the kind of natural eggs we used to spend a lot of time on boiling and dyeing and, if we were fancy and clever, making designs and even using multiple colors through a combination of melted wax and various tools and techniques. I fondly recall the olfactory and tactile sensations of vinegar, melted wax used during the process, and smooth egg shells.
Really elaborately decorated Easter eggs are called pysanky (plural form of pysanka from the Ukrainian word pysaty meaning "to write" (source), cf. Russian письменность ("writing"). You don't have to be a pro and make pysanky like the ones shown here, but you can derive a lot of fun and satisfaction making your own colored Easter eggs that are dyed and decorated in a fashion that is commensurate with your time and talents.
So, I knew for sure it was Easter because of the squeals of excitement the children made when they found another egg. Once again, as I had many times in the past, I pondered what "Easter" had to do with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and with bunnies and eggs. (Ditto for similar feelings about Yuletide and the birth of Christ. I won't go into that today, but might in late December if someone reminds me then about "Calling Christmas Christmas" 12/25/11).
The direct meaning of "Easter" is fairly transparent: related to the East, whence cometh the sun, bringing the warmness and brightness of the spring. Having lived through a winter in Uppsala, Sweden, where there wasn't much warmth and light during the winter months, I can attest that people grow stir-crazy waiting for the sun to rise in the east as soon as possible. Punxsutawney Phil's dilatory behavior on February 2 this year at the other end of the state of Pennsylvania exacerbated my own desire for the vernal equinox (see the discussion of Ēastre below) to arrive as soon as possible.
What is Easter?
For most people today,
Easter, also called Pascha (Aramaic, Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial following his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. It is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus, preceded by Lent (or Great Lent), a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.
But not for pagans:
The modern English term Easter, cognate with German Ostern, developed from an Old English word that usually appears in the form Ēastrun, Ēastron, or Ēastran; but also as Ēastru, Ēastro; and Ēastre or Ēostre. In the 8th century AD, Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar Bede recorded in his The Reckoning of Time that Ēosturmōnaþ (Old English for 'Month of Ēostre', translated in Bede's time as "Paschal month") was an English month, corresponding to April, which he says "was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month".
In Latin and Greek, the Christian celebration was, and still is, called Pascha (Greek: Πάσχα), a word derived from Aramaic פסחא (Paskha), cognate to the Hebrew פֶּסַח (Pesach). The word originally denoted the Jewish festival known in English as Passover, commemorating the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt. As early as 50 AD, Paul the Apostle, writing from Ephesus to the Christians in Corinth, applied the term to Christ. It is unlikely that the Ephesian and Corinthian Christians were the first to hear Exodus 12 interpreted as speaking about the death of Jesus, not just about the Jewish Passover ritual. In most languages, the feast is known by names derived from the Greek and Latin Pascha. Pascha is also a name by which Jesus himself is remembered in the Orthodox Church, especially in connection with his resurrection and with the season of its celebration. Others call the holiday "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day", after the Greek Ἀνάστασις, Anastasis, 'Resurrection' day.
(Wikipedia; for fuller treatments, see Ēostre and Names of Easter)
Not just the names of the festival indicate a pagan origin for Easter, the eggs and the bunnies also betray its pagan background.
The association of bunnies with Easter stems from ancient pagan traditions, particularly the festival of Eostre, a goddess of fertility and spring, whose symbol was the hare. If you know anything about rabbits, you are probably aware of their prolific breeding traits. Eggs are associated with Easter due to their symbolism of new life. In paganism, eggs represent fertility and rebirth.
On the other hand, as a young Christian, I performed in and witnessed many an Easter play and pageant. And I can tell you for sure that Christians fervently believe in the resurrection of Christ. I won't go into details here, but I will give you one example of how entrenched it is in their belief.
On the occasion of one of the Easter plays I was in, about 75 years ago, the cast practiced for more than a month to get it just right. The name of the girl who played Mary Magdalene was Barbara Little, but she was not little. In fact, she was chubby and spoke with a pronounced lisp.
Barbara had one line in the play, and we all encouraged her to keep calm and speak slowly. The line had only five words, and she tended to make the same error each time she spoke it. At last, Barbara's moment came. There was deathly silence in the church. People could barely breathe, there was so much palpable angst in the atmosphere.
Barbara walked up to the front of Jesus's empty tomb and proclaimed in her loudest thespian voice: "the thone hath rolleded away!"
Selected readings
- "My name is Hare and I know nothing" (4/14/06)
- "Punxsutawney and Maxatawny" (1/31/25)
- "'Here comes the prince'" (4/8/25)
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 20, 2025 @ 6:06 pm
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη
For the same transition of the Dionysian resurrection concept to the Christian one in the psyche of the Roman Empire, see "Orpheos Bakkikos":
https://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/articula/Orpheos_Bakkikos_en.pdf
…And in the same article, the Buddha is going to Parinirvana from a Roman representation Fig. 25 B
S Frankel said,
April 20, 2025 @ 6:08 pm
I've been trying to convince people that 'Easter' was originally 'Yeaster', so called because it celebrates rising, as opposed to the Festival of Un-risen Bread; and that 'Passover' is so called because people generally don't care for the un-risen bread, so they pass it over.
I've had very little success.
martin schwartz said,
April 20, 2025 @ 7:59 pm
@Victor Mair: I thought only we New Amsterdamers use
"stoop" (Dutch stoep).@Lucas Christopoulos: very interesting!
@nobody in particular: hmm, some Greek associate pascha
with paschein 'to suffer', as ref. to the Passion.
@S. Frankel: I too have played with the pseudology of
Easter as Yeaster, @Victor Mair and all: An egg, as symbol of renewal, is alsways placed on the Persian Nowruz (New Year,
Spring festival) "Haf'-Sin" ritual table I found 2 decorated
egg-shaped stones (marble?) in an antique store; only now do
I recognize them as lapidary pisanky. Martin Schwartz
DDeden said,
April 20, 2025 @ 10:26 pm
How surprising to me, I thought Easter and its eggs were related to oestrus, some sort of Spring fertility rite.
Estrus
1850, "frenzied passion," from Latin oestrus "frenzy, gadfly," from Greek oistros "gadfly; breeze; sting; anything which makes one mad, mad impulse," perhaps from a PIE *eis- (1), forming words denoting passion (see ire).
Kate Bunting said,
April 21, 2025 @ 5:29 am
"And I can tell you for sure that Christians fervently believe in the resurrection of Christ."
Of course we do – that's the whole point of the faith!
Philip Taylor said,
April 21, 2025 @ 7:41 am
Well, yes, Kate — I for one would have thought belief in the resurrection a sine qua non for any Christian, even though I know of two Christian ministers (one Anglican, one Roman Catholic) who each believe that at most 50% of the Bible is fact …
Ralph J Hickok said,
April 21, 2025 @ 9:23 am
@martin schwartz:
When I was a kid in Green Bay, WI, in the late '40s and early '50s, "stoop" was quite commonly used to mean the front porch steps. That may have had something to do with the fact that a large number of Belgians and Dutch immigrants had settled in the area.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 21, 2025 @ 9:59 am
Evidence for any actual pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon veneration of a divine personage named Eostre is limited to Bede's statement. Bede was no doubt passing on in good faith something he had heard, but one should not exclude the possibility that it was a folk-etymology or a garbling. The name is plausibly cognate with better-attested dawn or dawn-related goddesses in some other IE-speaking pagan cultures, but you have the chicken-and-egg problem of that also typically being the non-divine word for "dawn." E.g., did the Latin word "aurora" come from the name of the goddess Aurora, or did the name of the goddess simply reflect the natural phenomenon with which she was associated? Obviously the sun dawns in all months of the year, sometimes earlier and sometimes later, but having a month called dawn-month starting around the Vernal Equinox does not seem so implausible as to require a goddess to make sense. Calling Lent "Lent" in English (from a word that originally just meant "springtime" as its cognates still do in German and Dutch*) would be another example of the Anglo-Saxons just applying pre-existing time-of-year words to specifically Christian phenomena to which they had been introduced by missionaries who were not native speakers of any West Germanic language.
Easter and multilingualism anecdote: One of my daughters spent this past fall semester in Paris taking classes at the Sorbonne. One effect of having been immersed in French-speaking on a daily basis is that her brain now treats all non-English words as French by default. Which meant that late Saturday night as we were driving to the midnight Easter service she asked me to refresh her recollection on the Greek and Church Slavonic Easter greetings used in that service. And then it turned out that her brain wanted to pronounce Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη and Воистину воскресе using French phonology, with French-sounding vowels. Which she knew was wrong and knew sounded ridiculous but it was hard for her to self-consciously override whatever was causing that to happen.
*In German "Lenz" is now a fairly archaic word for "springtime," used mostly in poetry and jocular uses. The usual current German and Dutch words for "Lent" as a period of religious observance are transparently "Fasting-Time," which seems fair enough.
Yves Rehbein said,
April 21, 2025 @ 1:48 pm
@ J. W. Brewer, thanks for the cautious reminder. This is one of my favorite topics, vernal equinox, Venus and all.
One would still like to know more about the rabbit and the eggs, folk etymology or not, no? Talk about a hen-and-egg problem!
Lasius said,
April 22, 2025 @ 2:39 am
Exactly, the hare and not the rabbit. The custom of the easter bunny was adopted from Germany where it has always been a hare (Hase) not a rabbit (Kaninchen).
Hans Adler said,
April 22, 2025 @ 5:24 am
Whatever the real etymology of Easter may be, I would like to contribute to making the following facts a bit more widely known:
Not only is Easter officially the most important Christian holiday (despite Christmas having become the more popular one) and Passover one of the major Jewish holidays. Both are or were originally tied to the spring equinox — one of the two days in the year when day and night are of precisely equal length.
There is a very long, very widespread tradition of the spring equinox being the most important festival, or at least one of the most important, in almost every religion in Europe and probably in all temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. It is always tied to some form of fertility cult, as this is the natural date to define the beginning of a new annual cycle of life (in temperate zones).
Now here is where legitimate astronomy meets with astrology: Taking the spring equinox sunrise as the natural beginning of the year, it is natural to look at the stars behind the rising sun. Due to precession, these are not always the same. Over the millennia, the position cycles through the 12 zodiac signs. So far so boring. It only becomes intriguing for its underexplored implications if you take into account that the zodiac signs were also extremely widespread, mostly even including the symbols associated with each. And if you look at what the concrete zodiac signs have been historically through history:
Roughly 3rd/4th millennium BC: Taurus.
Roughly 2nd/1st millennium BC: Aries.
Roughly 1st/2nd millennium AD: Pisces.
Roughly from 3rd millennium AD: Aquarius.
(From memory, as it is very hard to find the relevant astronomical tables between all the astrological dross that comes up in a search. But IIRC the times are surprisingly exact.)
This is not just the reason why astrologists and various confused people like to talk about us entering "the age of Aquarius". Note that the first two animals in the list are horned, and are the most typical animals you would have expected to see sacrificed in temples in Southwest Asia. The change from horned animals to fish was apparently considered highly significant and led to widespread expectations of religious reforms. Christianity arose in this context, and its otherwise slightly puzzling connection to fish and fishermen makes a lot of sense once you know this.
Experts predict that there will soon be more and more wars around water as a precious resource. If astrology still had the cultural importance that it once did, then this could easily lead to a new prophet arising in our time, claiming to continue the line Moses – Jesus – Muhammad, and identified by his adherents as 'the Waterbearer' (Aquarius). In fact, there seem to have been some attempts to make such a connection with the Baháʼí Faith. It seems likely that the connection between Christianity and fish arose as a similar effort to give the (then) new religion the gravitas of astronomical change that 'required' religious change and giving up the sacrifice of horned animals. (Sealed when Titus, Roman Emperor-to-be of the Christianity-associated Flavian dynasty and one-time fiancé of Jewish queen Berenike, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.)
Yves Rehbein said,
April 22, 2025 @ 1:07 pm
@ Hans Adler, I was excited for a minute, but 3000 BC sounds very far out there.
In Egyptian, ḫpr is a symbol of regeneration, "to be born, appear" and ḫprr "scarabeus" by association a dung beatle that rolls the sun out everyone morning like Sisyphos the tsone (!) for all eternity; ꜣḫt is "inundation" (flood, spring!) as well as the place where the sun awaits sunrise, but "emergence" season is prt. For more see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ꜣḫ Alas, those are apparently unrelated. A contraction – indeed a cross-over – ofꜣḫ and pr would make sense, only the calender is fairly young as far as I understand it.
Nevertheless, I hae to admit the horned dung-beetle is kind of like horned.
Hans Adler said,
April 23, 2025 @ 10:14 am
@Yves Rehbein:
Just to be clear, I didn't try to make any connections specifically to Egypt or to say anything about etymology. My main point was that in the first century BC, when astrology was still very much entangled both with science and with religion, people in Southeast Asia had been sacrificing horned animals for a long time and no doubt had also been celebrating a spring festival related to one kind of horned animal for a long time.
And they were aware that much earlier, the relation would have been to another horned animal. And that now it was changing to fish. Which seems to have fed into the apocalyptic sentiment that oozes out of the New Testament, and which, apparently, was not exclusive to Christianity but rather a part of the environment that allowed Christianity to grow.
I am not making any claims about what people in the region believed 3000 BC. Sorry if it could be understood that way. I don't know if there is earlier evidence for what kind of animals were widely sacrificed than the (proto-Greek?) horned altars common in the Mediterranean and at some point reaching Israel. And the earliest of these only date from the mid 2nd millennium BC. I am also not sure if the evidence for the origins of today's zodiac signs date that far back.
It's kind of weird that the ancient Egyptians venerated a dung beetle. Given that they also sacrificed horned animals, it would be really intriguing if it had been the taurus scarab rather than the sacred scarab (which has nothing similar to horns). Maybe it originally was and we just don't know, but that speculation seems way too weak to be useful for anything.
Daily Prayer said,
April 24, 2025 @ 1:24 pm
This Easter post is so nice! I love how you mix your own memories of coloring eggs with some history about where Easter comes from. The picture you paint of kids hunting for plastic eggs while you think back to the smell and feel of dyeing real eggs really hits home. I enjoyed learning how Easter has both pagan spring celebrations and Christian religious roots – you explained it in a fun way. And that story at the end about Barbara Little saying "the thone hath rolleded away" made me laugh out loud! Those childhood church play memories are something special that we all share, no matter when we grew up.
Frank Clements said,
April 28, 2025 @ 8:36 pm
As earlier commentators have pointed out, more recent historians of religion have criticized large parts of the received narrative of Pagan survivals influencing Christian festivals and rituals. Not that there was no influence, but it's very difficult to reconstruct pre-Christian practices and beliefs with real certainty, and previous folklorists and scholars of religion tended to project their own values and agendas onto an idealized or romanticized Pagan past. There are also many elements to celebrations that developed far more recently than many people think. Ronald Hutton has written a lot of very good books and articles on the subject. For Easter customs, Alfred L. Shoemaker's Eastertide in Pennsylvania is a great resource.
Sergey said,
April 30, 2025 @ 12:52 am
I'm pretty sure that "pysaty" means "to paint", "to decorate" in Ukrainian in this context. In Russian the word "писать" that mostly means "to write" also has the meaning "to paint " in the context "писать картину" ("to paint a picture"), and the word "расписать/расписывать" means "to decorate by painting".
Victor Mair said,
April 30, 2025 @ 7:02 am
Old Church Slavonic писати, includes discussion of Ukrainian cognates.