It is now April, and just over a week ago we celebrated the springtime holiday, Easter! Many people love to go Easter egg hunting, where people hide eggs for others to find. There can be money or candy inside of the little plastic eggs. Wait, before we continue, when did Easter become a holiday? Why do we have the Easter Bunny, and why are we finding eggs and not little bunnies? What is the history behind this springtime holiday?

Easter is originally an ancient Pagan celebration of the spring equinox. In Christianity, the day was dedicated to observing the resurrection of Jesus Christ, celebrated around the time of the Jewish Passover. Early Christians who did not participate in Jewish customs eventually did celebrate the pagan spring festival, recognizing Easter as “resurrection day” with the Jewish. It was the Pagan spring festival, now recognized as Easter, the resurrection day. Then the Easter bunny first appeared in America in the 1700s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and brought with them their egg-laying hare called “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” The German immigrants children started to show the other children how to build and make a nest for those colorful eggs the “Oschter Haws” made. While we now know where the Easter Bunny came from, there is no sure idea of why the Easter Bunny is a bunny and not a hare but we know why Easter is full of colorful eggs. 

One of the most known things from the holiday Easter is the famous Easter eggs. These famous Easter eggs track back to the Ancient Babylonians (2000 B.C. to around 540 B.C). They believed an egg fell from heaven into the Euphrates River and “hatched” the goddess of fertility, Astarte. Pagans exchanged eggs as gifts during the springtime festival. Today, eggs are painted bright colors and used in Easter egg hunts.

What are your thoughts on the holiday? Do you celebrate Easter? Many families have traditions for different holidays. Does your family have any fun Easter traditions? One tradition my family does is we have a really good dinner with my whole family and after the parents would hide eggs for us kids to go find. Some of them were so hard to find we didn’t find them until a year later! The photo you see above is from when I was part of a big easter egg hunt. I helped hide the eggs and was running the egg race game with the other kids in the photo. 

Jarus, O. (2022, September 20). Ancient Babylon, the iconic Mesopotamian city that survived for 2,000 years. LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/ancient-babylon-mesopotamia-civilization#:~:text=Ancient%20Babylon%20was%20an%20influential,a%20significant%20impact%20on%20Mesopotamia  

© 2023 Christmas Central. (2023). The History of Easter. The History of Easter | Christmas Central. https://www.christmascentral.com/resources/holiday-histories/history-of-easter/  

PHOTO BY: AVA MEIKLE