Wabbit Tracks & Easter Bunnies

While I do remember going to church on Easter Sunday as a little girl, that family ritual had stopped by the time I was in my early teens.  I remember liking church on Easter Sunday: my mother would dress my little sister and I up in pretty, frilly dresses, and I was allowed to wear my one-pearl necklace (for special occasions only).  Sometimes my sister (who is 3-1/2 years younger) and I would be dressed like twins--that was not so much fun.  I have one memory--it's from when my sister was around 3 years old (and I was around 6 years old), sitting in church on a sunny Easter Sunday: red, blue, purple, and yellow colors pouring onto my dress from the lighted stained glass windows.

In my adult secular memory, however, are more important rituals than church--more important because they involved happy family bonding, imaginative play, and fun.

One involved egg decorating.  This tradition came down via my German grandmother.  We called them "forest eggs," but my cousins called them "dinosaur eggs"--either way, they were difficult to make, but very cool.  (I'm sorry that I don't have a picture of them.)  In their natural state, they were various shades of green and yellow, with some orange and brown and white: shadowy images of plant outlines.  But they were often further colored with dyes: purple, blue, red, more orange, more yellow, more green,.... Here is how they are made:

They looked like the non-flowery eggs (left side).

 You will need:

• uncooked eggs
• lots of onion skins (the dryer, the better)
• thread
• various shapeley leaves (parsley, celery, clover,...); edible flowers (such as violets) are a nice addition of color and shape, too
• vinegar 
• food coloring (optional)

Directions:  

• Place the leaves loosely around the egg (do not clump too many together).
• Wrap onion skin on top of the leaves, to hold them in place.
• Tightly wrap thread around, and around the eggs, to hold everything in place.  Be sure that the thread is as tight as possible--I usually start off with a loose wrapping, tightening after the first 10-20 wrap-arounds.  Be careful to not wrap so tightly that you crack open the eggs!
• Carefully place the eggs into a pot of water.
• Add a little vinegar.
• Bring the water to a rapid boil.
• Turn the water off and cover the pot.
• Let sit for 20 minutes.
• Cool and unwrap your eggs. 
• OR dip your wrapped eggs into the food coloring/vinegar/water mixture (as you would in coloring other eggs).

Another ritual seemed to have been started by my grandfather (who was married to the above mentioned grandmother).  We would collect food for the Easter bunny (such as the above mentioned leaves, as well as flowers--if available) and leave it in a bowl for him on Easter Eve.  The next morning, all or most of the food would be gone; in its place would be a few unwrapped chocolate eggs (the Easter Bunny's poop).  We kids never ate those, but it was amusing--and gross when my grandfather would pop one into his own mouth.  Sometimes, too, we would wake up to find a bit of food coloring on our faces, arms, or hands--and my grandfather would tell us that the Easter Bunny had been looking over us, while he had been working on his eggs for us.

As you can see, for me, Easter has nothing to do with the Christian faith.  Then again, the Easter Bunny is not a part of the Christian faith.  According to Lawrence Cunningham (a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and Christianity editor for the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion),   there isn't "...any intrinsic value to the rabbit to the resurrection of Jesus Christ;"  symbols such as eggs and bunnies, "to some extent return to their pre-Christian roots as symbols of spring fertility" ("Spring Bunny vs. Easter Rabbit").    According to Barbara G. Walker:

The Easter Bunny began with the pagan festival of the springtime Goddess Eostre, when it was said that the Goddess's totem, the Moon-hare, would lay eggs for good children to eat1. . . .  Eostre's hare was the shape that Celts imaged on the surface of the full moon, derived from old Indo-European sources.  In Sanskrit, the moon was cacin, "that which is marked with the Hare." 2   Queen Boadiccea's banners displayed the Moon-hare as a sacred sign.  Both hares and cats were designated the familiars of witches in Scotland, where the word malkinmawkin was applied to both.3  (The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols & Sacred Objects, 377) or

Easter Bunny legends apparently began in Germany, in the 1500s, and by the 1880s the Germans had begun promoting the ritual of chocolate bunnies (Kevin Shortsleeve), so it is no surprise to me that my German grandmother would have encouraged her family egg-making traditions.  (My grandfather's so-called "traditions," however, seem to have been only inspired by his wife's traditions; a bit of a parody of them--I believe.)  

While I mostly grew up with a secular Easter--religion had nothing to do with it--it was a lovely game of magic and fun.  This does not at all demean the importance of my family's rituals.  Imaginary games are important.  Karl Sven Rosengren and Carl N. Johnson observe, "More generally, children's capacity to pretend has been linked to a wide range of social and cognitive skills, including language development (Ervin-Tripp, 1991), social competence (Singer & Singer, 1990), memory development (Newman, 1990), exploration and mastery of emotional themes (Bretherton, 1989), and logical reasoning (Dias & Harris, 1990) (Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children, 247).  

So, I say, in the important spirit of imagination: 

Happy Easter everyone!

TRANSCRIPT

ELMER: Rabbit tracks! [pointing spear at tracks]

ELMER: [jabbing spear into rabbit hole, singing] Kill the wabitt; kill the wabbit!

BUGGS: Kill the rabbit?!

----------------------------
1 de Lys, Claudia.  The Giant Book of Superstitions.  Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1979: 117.
2 Baring-Gould, Sabine.  Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.  New York: University Books, 1967: 204.
3 Potter, Stephen, and Laurens Sargent. Pedigree.  New York: Taplinger, 1974: 71.