Was the Easter Bunny Originally Pagan?

Growing up as a kid, I loved Easter. The bunny-shaped chocolates, dyeing eggs, and the annual Easter egg hunt were all fun parts of the holiday. But most of all, I loved going on a treasure hunt to find the Easter basket the Easter Bunny had hid for me.

As I got older, I started to wonder: what does the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus, specifically? The short answer? Not much. The longer answer winds through ancient fertility rituals, German folklore and morality, and a hefty dose of modern marketing.

Were did the Easter Bunny come from? Grab a chocolate bunny and keep reading to find out.

Hares, Fertility, and the Spring Equinox

Long before chocolate bunnies and Easter baskets, hares were sacred animals in many ancient cultures. Because of their ability to rapidly reproduce, they were primarily a symbol of fertility, vitality, and the return of life after winter. (It’s why they’re associated with the Spring Equinox and pagan holiday of Ostara and somewhat also with Beltane.) In some traditions they also are associated with the dawn.

In ancient Rome, hares were considered sacred to Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, and reproduction. In his poem Ars Amatoria (Book 3, line 130), Roman Ovid advises gifting animals associated with love and fertility:

“Let the hare be given, sacred to swift-footed Venus.”

Ovid’s reference, though satirical, reflects a broader cultural association in Rome between hares and sexuality, virility, and love. Roman artwork also often depicted Cupid (Eros) with hares—sometimes chasing them or holding them as symbols of desire.

We see this theme continued in later paintings of Venus, such as in the Renaissance painting Venus, Mars, and Cupid (1490) by Piero di Cosimo.

The Mysterious Goddess Ēostre

The Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre (or Ostara) is a mysterious figure. She appears only once — literally once — in the historical record. It’s in Bede the Venerable’s De Temporum Ratione (The Reckoning of Time), written around 725 CE. There, Bede writes:

“Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’’, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”

Those few sentences are all we have and literally all we know about Eostre. To date, there are no myths, temples, or rituals. And yet, despite this, she made a profound impact, so perhaps she was pretty powerful. I can only hope that one day we uncover one of her temples or original myths.

In the meantime, we have 19th-century folklorists, such as Jacob Grimm (of the Grimm fairy tales) to thank for his imaginative expansion of her story. Grimm expanded on Bede’s brief mention and began calling Eostre a spring goddess and associating her with hares and eggs, likely because of their broader symbolism in springtime rituals. (If you want to learn more about all of this, check out our article on Ostara.)

Whatever the goddess’s actual story is, her name lives on in the English and German terms for the holiday: Easter (English) and Ostern (German). In most other languages, the holiday is known by derivatives of Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesach (Passover).

In Hops the Osterhase, the Easter Hare

The folk tradition of the Easter Hare (or Osterhase) emerged in 17th-century, in Protestant areas within Southwestern Germany. This mythical creature was said to lay brightly colored eggs and hide them in gardens for good children to find.

The Osterhase was likely a fusion of pagan hare symbolism of spring and fertility with Christian morality tales and folk storytelling.

And, there, in that theme of virtue and morality and in the fact that the folklore comes from Protestants is the Easter Bunny’s connection to Christianity.

The first known mention of the Osterhase (or Easter hare) in print was in 1682 by Lutheran Protestant Georg Franck von Franckenau, writing under the name the name of Johannes Richier. In a 16-page satirical piece entitled, in part, “Satyrae medicae, continuatio XVIII. De Ovis Paschalibus” (Medical Satires, continuation of XVIII. Ordinary discussion concerning Easter eggs”) he wrote:

“In Alsace and neighboring regions, these eggs are commonly called ‘hare’s eggs’ because of the tale with which simple people, and especially children, are deceived—that the Easter Hare lays the eggs and hides them in the grass, so that they search for them and believe more eagerly.”​

Georg Franck von Franckenau

According to folklorist and Catholic priest Francis Weiser’s The Easter Book, children would construct nests out of bonnets, hats, or baskets lined with hay or cloth” in secluded areas of gardens, hoping the Osterhase would fill them overnight with eggs and treats.

We don’t have a 17th or 18th century text to reference for this, so it might be purely a reconstruction by later historians, but that nest tradition is where we get the modern Easter basket.

And, when German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1700s, they brought the Osterhase tradition with them—and it evolved. The nests became baskets. The hare became a bunny. And the ever-watching rabbit became more of a sweet tradition. (Literally.)

From Folklore to Chocolate

By the 19th century, hares had become bunnies, and edible versions started appearing in Germany, where chocolatiers molded hollow chocolate rabbits as Easter treats. These were more affordable to produce and quickly became beloved treats.

In the early 20th century, American companies like Brach’s and Hershey’s began mass-producing those chocolate bunnies and now they come in practically every flavor imaginable.

Vosges, one of my favorite chocolatiers who often dabble in magical concoctions, sells Milk Chocolate Sea Salt Fairy Bunnies, which is a nice ode to their liminal magical past within Irish folklore.

The Easter Bunny in Modern Times

Today, Easter is a hybrid of Christian theology and ancient springtime symbolism. The bunny doesn’t appear in any biblical texts, nor did pagan cultures specifically revere the Easter bunny.

But, what did began as a fertility symbol in ancient, pagan cultures transformed through time and folklore into a mythical egg-laying hare, and finally into a beloved chocolate icon.

Sources and Further Reading

• De Temporum Ratione by Bede
• Ars Amatoria by Ovid
• Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland by Lady Francesca Wilde
• The Gaelic Otherworld by John Gregorson Campbell
• Celtic Cosmology and the Otherworld: Mythic Origins, Sovereignty and Liminality by Sharon Paice MacLeod
• De ovis paschalibus by Georg Franck von Franckenau
• Deutsche Mythologie by Jacob Grimm
• The Easter Book by Francis Weiser