So what's with the Bunny?

I'm all about learning the non-christian origins of holidays. Me being a Godless heathen and all. Anyway, after a brief search on the good ol' internet I found a guzillion different origins of Easter. All of them infinitely less depresso than being nailed to a cross and coming back zombie-style.

Okay so back in the day there was this Godess named Ostara (she had lots of names actually some of them quite close to the word Easter). Anyway she was the Godess of fertility and of the rising sun. Incidently the word East (as in "the sun rises in the East") also comes from Ostara. Being the Godess of fertility, Ostara was all about the bunnies and the eggs. Bunnies being prolific breeders and eggs being mini baby factories.

One story I like is the one where Ostara entertained some kids by turning her pet bird into a rabbit. The rabbit laid all these bright coloured eggs. (not chocolate ones. The net is pretty vague on the chocolate origins except to say that it was probably the Germans' idea. Go Germans!) Anyhoo good ol' Ostara gave the eggs to the children. What a nice lady.

Another kind of cool story is that some people (I don't remember who, I'm writing this from memory) used to go into the forest and get all kinds of different eggs. This was the first Easter egg hunt. The eggs were different colours because they were from different types of birds (saves time dying). Then they ate them. I guess they realized this was kind of gross because they started dying chicken eggs instead and putting them in baskets made to look like birds nests.

All this fun stuff happens the first full moon after the spring Equinox. Or in our case, the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the Equinox. That's when Ostara makes the sun rise and makes the spring come and makes all the animals get busy.

McNicoll Traditions:

On Good Friday we do jack all. Jack all is open. There's jack all to do.

On Easter Saturday (why isn't it called Easter Saturday anyway?) we dye hard-boiled eggs with food colouring. Then we colour them with markers. Adam is infinitely perplexed as to why we, after dying the eggs, would need to colour them again but it seems perfectly logical to me.

During the night a giant bunny comes and brings us chocolate. She also hides all the easter eggs around the living room. Some years she leaves us badly rhyming clues that lead all around the house and eventually to our Easter baskets (ie: "When you go to watch tv, and Easter clue is there to see"). This year she didn't do the clues because she left them on her old laptop by accident.

On Easter Sunday we find all the eggs and chocolate. Then we have an egg fight. This is one tradition I was unable to find an origin. It's certainly not something we invented because I found several references to families doing this (including one brief reference in My Big Fat Greek Wedding). So what you do is you hold your Easter egg so only the end is exposed. Then you tap it against some other person's egg. Whoever doesn't crack wins. What do you win? Nothing. I think it's a European thing.

Then we make deviled eggs. Yum!