Grand Avenue by Mike Thompson for April 20, 2014

Exactly. Sorta like it’s a lie, huh? Oh, but Christians wouldn’t lie to their kids, would they?“Our fathers have inherited lies.” Jer. 16:19.

logistics logistics logistics, we don’ need no steenking logistics!

we were never ever told that the Easter bunny brought Easter baskets and eggs. We knew about the Easter bunny but was never told he brought eggs…..how silly. Funniest Easter egg hunt I ever was a part of was the year they decided to wrap all the eggs in foil instead of coloring them, they hid about 100 eggs at the family reunion and it was ok, until the sun came out and they all shined like diamonds….no eggs were lost that year.

Agreed guys.

The original Easter bunny was probably associated with the Pagan equinox festival that predated Easter. The Saxons devoted the month of April to celebrating their goddess of spring and fertility, who was, not coincidentally, named Eastre. Eastre’s sacred animal was the hare – not surprising since the rabbit is one of the most common symbols of fertility and rebirth.

The colored eggs carried by today’s Easter bunnies have another, even more ancient origin. Eggs have long been associated with fertility and springtime festivals – for so long, in fact, that the precise roots of the association are unknown. Ancient Romans and Greeks utilized eggs in festivals celebrating resurrected gods. The egg also featured prominently in the Jewish rituals of Passover – and still today the roasted egg has prominence on the seder table as an essential symbol of springtime and rebirth.

Scholars believe that the pairing of the hare and the egg together in Easter may also have Pagan roots. During springtime, when days and nights were equal length, the hare was identified with the moon goddess and the egg with the sun god. Pairing the two together offered a kind of ying and yang to spring equinox celebrations.

The next historical entry under Bunny & Egg is found fifteen hundred years later in Germany. There, children would eagerly await the arrival of the Oschter Haws, a rabbit who delighted children on Easter morning by laying colored eggs in nests. This was also the first known time that the rabbit and egg were iconoclastically linked together.

The German tradition of the Oschter Haws migrated to America in the 1800s, likely accompanying German immigrants, many of whom settled in Pennsylvania. Over the past 200 years, the Oschter Haws or Easter Bunny has become the most commercially recognized symbol of Easter.

Today American children squeal with delight when they see the bunny-whether he’s headlining their neighborhood Easter egg hunt or greeting visitors at the local mall. The Easter bunny and his ubiquitous basket of eggs has surely become the most adored and recognized symbol of the Easter season.

AS you can see Radar, it is a tradition that has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of the Risen Christ. Just because many Christian also adopted the secular tradition for children doesn’t make it a lie associated with Jesus. Your attempt to denigrate one over the other is self-serving and sad.

Linda, if you’ve never been to a church that had an Easter egg hunt, you haven’t been around much. They may not do it as much as they used to, but I’d wager quite a few still do.

Fourth of July? It’s the middile of April…