Bonus: Rabbits, Eggs, & Ostara, oh my!
- Acorn
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
In my household, we dye Ostara Eggs and do Ostara Egg Hunts. This year I crocheted refillable eggs, in my never ending quest to cut out plastic in the household wherever I can.
Eggs are a classic sign of the return of life. If you're like me, you spent much of your childhood wondering why we associate them with rabbits this time of year?
As it turns out, writer Stephen Winick has done the deep dive for us in "Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think."
He writes, "In 1874, in [a] book...titled Deutsche Mythologie, Adolf Holtzmann speculated about the already-popular German tradition of the 'Easter hare' (the tradition from which our Easter bunny derives) by associating it with the goddess, thus claiming for the first time a connection between Ostara and the hare: 'The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba'.” [Winick's translation from German.]
Winick goes on to describe some of the stories published over the years, including the claim that the association is as recent as 1987! (content warning: condescending Xian rhetoric about our beloved holiday) However, his detailed research and reporting shows a history rich with scholars building off the original 1874 connection with further claims regarding "known traditions and stories" from Germanic folklore and customs that have proven impossible to confirm to be older than the original 1874 mention.
How it started:
1874 - Holtzmann writes, "Uebrigens ist doch der Hase ein Vogel gewesen, da er Eier legt…." (which Winick translates to mean, "By the way, the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs….")
1882 - According to Winick, Wilhelm Wackernagel (a German-Swiss philologist specializing in Germanic studies) wrote that Ostara “rode over the fields in the spring in a wagon drawn by hares." (Please note that I haven't been able to find which book Wackernagel may have recorded this in, as not many of them have been translated or have had articles published about them. Liedergeschichten was published in 1882, which is a book recording the histories of core hymns used by the Christian church at that time and notes on their writers.)
1883 - K. A. Oberle's "Überreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum" opines, "The hare seems to have been a bird at first, which the goddess transformed into a four-footed animal; that is why it can lay eggs at the goddess's festival in grateful remembrance of its former status as a bird" (translated from the German by me with the help of a translator)
1896 - Article by Walter James Hoffman called “Popular Superstitions" in the November issue of Popular Science - "The association of the hare with eggs is curious and the explanation is found in the belief that originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara turned into a quadruped. For this reason the hare in grateful recognition of its former quality as a bird and swift messenger of the Spring Goddess is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter time."
And by then, it had pretty solidly worked its way into the hearts of people who were enchanted by the fanciful nature of the imagery and the associated crafts and games, into what we're familiar with today.
As fun as it is to explore the history and roots of these sorts of things, I remind you of my earlier article, in which I implore you to celebrate Ostara with whatever feels right to you to celebrate the season. Whether you're hunting for eggs or getting into Good Trouble, I hope your Spring is bright and productive!
Blessed Be!
By Acorn, 1°
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