Have you ever wondered why rabbits are part of the celebration of Easter?
Since rabbits don’t lay eggs how come the Easter Bunny goes around
hiding eggs for Easter? Where do you suppose he got his eggs? What bird do
you know that lays eggs and that goes, “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck,
cluck!”? The chicken, of course. So, do you suppose that maybe the
Easter Bunny borrowed the eggs from the chicken? If that is so, then why
is there not an Easter chicken instead of an Easter rabbit?
First of all, the original Easter Bunny was actually a hare, (spelled H-A-R-E),
who is a cousin of the rabbit. What's the difference between a hare and a
rabbit? Not much, except that hares are said to be born with their eyes open,
while rabbits are born blind until their eyes open a few days later. There
is a legend that says the hare never blinked or closed its eyes. It was a
nocturnal creature of the moon and gave birth to its young according to the
monthly cycle of the moon. And since the date of Easter has always been tied
in with the phases of the moon—Easter is always the first Sunday after
the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox (meaning the first day of spring)—therefore
the rabbit (or the hare) got brought into the celebration of Easter. It’s
kind of complicated, but both the hare and the egg were symbols of the ancient
goddess of spring Eastre (which is where we got our word for Easter). And
that is why the rabbit got the job of delivering eggs and why we have an
Easter bunny instead of an Easter chicken.
I like the PEANUTS version of the story which has Linus believing that the
Easter Beagle will deliver colored eggs to all the good little boys and girls
on Easter. Lucy, of course, will have none of it, and boils, colors, and
hides her own eggs, which she plans to "find" on Easter morning and keep
them all to herself. She doesn't realize that Snoppy was following close
behind, collecting all her eggs in a basket. On Easter morning Linus discovers
an empty Easter basket, but then spies a dancing figure coming out of the
fields, it's the Easter Beagle carrying a basket of lovely colored eggs (Lucy's
eggs) and delivering them to all the boys and girls. Everyone seems pleased
with their colored Easter eggs with the exception of Lucy who complains,
"Some Easter Beagle. I got my own egg."
"Some Easter Beagle. I got my own egg." I kind of like that idea. Lucy is
onto something important. You’ve all heard the expression, “What
goes around comes around.” Or what you give is what you get. The only
reason Lucy got her own egg back was because Snoppy the Easter Beagle gave
her eggs away and one came back to her as a way of saying thank you for being
so generous. There’s a song that says, "love isn't love until you give
it away," and when you do, "you end up having more." It’s true that
Lucy had fewer eggs than she started out with, but by giving them away she
made many other children very happy, and so she had more love than she had
before.
More love is what Easter is really all about. Easter remembers a great Teacher
and Prophet, named Jesus of Nazareth, who loved God, loved life, and loved
people so much that he wanted the whole world to be filled with love. To
make that happen he taught the people that they needed to be more loving
and forgiving of one another, not just with their family and friends, but
also with strangers and enemies. If that could happen it would be like heaven
on earth, and so he called his dream the kingdom of heaven. So on Easter
we hope you will enjoy the Easter Bunny, the Easter Chicken, the Easter Beagle,
colorful Easter eggs, and most of all, to remember the great Teacher, Jesus,
who said that the most important thing of all was to bring more love into
the world.
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