No, the Easter Bunny is not Pagan, So Knock it Off.  You’re Embarrassing Yourselves

 TL;DR
No, the Easter Bunny didn’t hippity-hop out of some ancient pagan fertility rite. Hares have been cozying up to saints and popping up in medieval Christian art for centuries—sometimes in the margins, sometimes under Mary’s skirts. This long-eared legend strolled in through the church door, not a pagan bonfire.

Where Did the Easter Bunny Really Come From?

Let’s be honest. The idea that the Easter Bunny came from pagan goddess worship is too good a story to die quietly. Fertility! Rabbits! Spring! It’s got all the makings of a History Channel fever dream. But when you squint at the evidence—which, admittedly, takes about two seconds—you’ll notice something’s missing. Like… all of it.

People love to point to the spring goddess Eostre and imagine egg-laying rabbits dancing through meadows in some pastel fertility festival. But historians? They’re still waiting for even a scrap of evidence that hares had anything to do with her—or with any pagan fertility rites. The actual link between bunnies and Easter shows up in a far more familiar place: dusty monasteries, medieval bestiaries, and Christian folklore that was just as imaginative as it was devout.

A Creature of Resurrection and...Virgin Birth?

So here’s the twist: hares weren’t pagan mascots. They were theological metaphors in fur coats. In early Christian thought, animals weren’t just fauna—they were sermons with legs. The hare’s supposed ability to sleep with its eyes open made it a symbol of vigilance. Saint Ambrose, never one to miss a good metaphor, compared this to believers staying spiritually alert for Christ’s return. He even tagged the hare as a symbol of resurrection (Ferguson 144).

But wait, it gets weirder. Medieval scholars—God bless their imaginations—also believed hares could reproduce without losing their virginity. Not sure what the hares thought of that, but the theologians loved it. The result? Hares got linked to the Virgin Mary, showing up in religious paintings curled up demurely by her feet (Hall 205). It wasn’t about zoology; it was all allegory. Purity, miraculous birth, and a creature that somehow sidestepped biology.

The Three Hares and the Holy Trinity

By the time you hit the Gothic period, hares weren’t just symbols—they were sacred geometry. Enter the Three Hares motif: three rabbits chasing each other in a circle, each sharing ears in a way that gives you three animals and only three ears total. It’s a visual brain teaser—one that medieval Christians loved because it reflected the paradox of the Trinity: one God, three persons, zero logical diagrams that make sense (Khaimovich 91).

These weren’t idle doodles. The Three Hares show up carved into the ceilings of English and German cathedrals, tucked into stained glass, even stitched into church fabrics. And not a single one of those churches ever worshipped Ishtar.

Divine Escape Artists

There’s more. In Christian folklore, hares weren’t just symbols of purity—they were also spiritual escape artists. According to legend, Saint Melangell once protected a hare fleeing a hunter, and the creature was spared. Why? Because the saint’s holiness turned the very earth into sanctuary. In this tale—and others like it—the hare stands in for the soul fleeing the snares of sin (Lucas).

Medieval manuscripts liked to tuck hares into margins, half-hidden like divine Easter eggs. Sometimes they’re being hunted. Sometimes they’re just loitering. But in either case, they’re never pagan mascots. They’re allegories of grace, escape, and watchfulness.

So...What About Eostre?

Ah yes, Eostre. The internet’s favorite fertility goddess who, much like the Easter Bunny’s connection to paganism, is more fiction than fact. Her name appears exactly once in any ancient source: a brief mention by Bede the Venerable in the 8th century. He notes that some Anglo-Saxons used to celebrate something called Eosturmonath, presumably named after her. But bunnies? Not a whisper. Eggs? Not a yolk (Hutton 180).

The rest was cooked up centuries later. Most of the supposed Eostre mythology—rabbits, eggs, pastel dresses—came not from pagan priests but from Victorian scholars and modern spiritualists trying to retrofit a holiday with a myth that never quite existed.

German Folklore Hops In

If you really want to know where the Easter Bunny comes from, forget Mesopotamia. Head to 16th-century Germany. That’s where we find the “Osterhase,” or Easter Hare, who supposedly brought colored eggs to children who behaved. It was a Protestant thing—rooted in Christian morality, not goddess worship—and it spread through Lutheran households like candy in a plastic egg (Horowitz).

Fast forward a couple centuries, and German immigrants brought the tradition to America. The hare morphed into a bunny, gained a sweet tooth, and eventually turned into the floppy-eared sugar dealer we all know today. By the 20th century, the Easter Bunny was featured in department store windows, chocolate molds, and Sunday morning sugar crashes nationwide.

Timeline of the Hare’s Journey

• c. 340–397 CE: Saint Ambrose links the hare to resurrection and spiritual vigilance.
• 731 CE: Bede mentions Eostre. He does not mention hares.
• 12th century: Christian bestiaries portray hares as emblems of purity and grace.
• 14th century: Three Hares motif decorates churches across Europe.
• 15th century: Flemish religious art includes hares in Marian symbolism.
• 16th century: The Easter Hare appears in German Protestant texts as a moral rewarder.
• 18th century: German immigrants bring the Easter Bunny to the American colonies.
• 19th–20th centuries: Victorian scholars start stitching up a pagan origin myth with zero sourcing.
• Today: The Easter Bunny is a chocolate-covered cultural mashup with medieval and Protestant roots—not pagan ones.

Conclusion

Let’s put this one to bed: the Easter Bunny didn’t spring out of a fertility cult or hop through history carrying the banner of goddess worship. It was crafted—piece by piece—by Christian thinkers, medieval artists, German folklore, and a whole lot of theological imagination. If anything, it’s less “pagan fertility idol” and more “catechism with whiskers.”

The real rabbit hole leads to bestiaries and Bible margins, not bonfires and Beltane.

Works Cited

Dines, I. "The Hare and its Alter Ego in the Middle Ages." Reinardus, 2004. Academia.edu.

Ferguson, George. Signs & Symbols in Christian Art. Oxford UP, 1959.

Garnczarska, Magdalena. "The Iconographic Motif of a Griffin and a Hare." Studia Ceranea, 2015. CEEOL.

Hall, James. Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art. Routledge, 2018.

Horowitz, Elliott. "Odd Couples: The Eagle and the Hare." Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2004. JSTOR.

Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford UP, 1996.

Khaimovich, Boris. "On the Semantics of the Three Hares Motif." East European Jewish Affairs, 2011.

Lucas, Martin J. "The Iconography of the Hare." Naturalist, 2024. EBSCOhost.