I can’t believe it’s been a year since Easter

Can you believe Easter is here again? Time sure does fly! Here we are again, remembering the death and resurrection of the man they call Messiah. Or celebrating the Easter Bunny and his abundance of chocolate eggs, depending on your spiritual affiliation, or indeed, lack thereof.

Being an Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal hybrid, I get the Saviour bit when it comes to Easter. The Bunny bit, not so much. So, predictably, I Googled him. According to news.discovery.com, which references the University of Florida’s Centre for Children’s Literature, the origin of the Easter Bunny dates back to 13th-century, in pre-Christian Germany, when people worshiped several gods and goddesses.

The deity Eostra was the goddess of spring and fertility, and feasts were held in her honour in March, usually around the 20th. Her symbol was the rabbit because of the animal’s high reproduction rate. Spring also symbolized new life and rebirth and eggs were an ancient symbol of fertility. So there was a goddess called Esotra who ruled over rebirth and fertility. People came together to celebrate her in springtime, which is also Easter season.

Essentially, they came together to celebrate new life (fertility) and resurrection (rebirth), hence the randy rabbit and the reproductive eggs. That Esotra the goddess of rebirth is celebrated during the resurrection of Christ can’t be a coincidence. Who’s imitating whom, you might ask yourself. The pagan goddess or the man they call Messiah? I don’t know about y’all, but I think I’ll stick with JC.

I’ve never really been a bunny rabbit fan myself, not the real, live, animals and certainly not the stuffed ones. They’ve always seemed too ‘girly-girly’ for me. I do like chocolate though, and I am partial to a white chocolate Easter egg. Just not for purposes of worshipping. But it does make me wonder now, if the next time I eat an Easter egg, it’ll be a shout out to Ms Esotra. Is she sitting on some pagan throne, with a rabbit on her lap, smiling gleefully at the thought of one more clueless human, stuffing their face at her altar?

Is her head thrown back in unadulterated glee, caviar dripping from her pointy incisors, relishing the thought of one more oblivious follower? I wonder. Is she alive? Or was the goddess of rebirth not able to resurrect herself? These are the thoughts, I fear, that will fill my head every time I see a darned chocolate egg! I think I might need a ‘Help me, Jesus!’ on this one. It’s a good thing it’s Easter. Have a happy one y’all.