Happy Easter! Celebrate Like Rabbits
Christ arose, but this Sunday’s holiday is also about fertility and the old bunny hop
He’s got jelly beans for Johnny/Colored eggs for sister Sue/And an orchid for your mommy/And an Easter bonnet too
Easter caught a case of the cutes a long time ago. Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” dates back to 1949, Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade” to 1933. But the symbols both songs memorialize go much farther back.
Like Christmas, Easter is a holiday that grafts a New Testament story onto older, pagan traditions.
In the case of this weekend’s spring fling, it’s rebirth, as in Jesus’s ascension, conflated with fertility.
Celebrate! Ovulate! Dance to the music!
And when you look at it that way, the peripatetic rabbit, however generous, however philanthropic, is really a symbol of propagation.
Just as eggs are obvious symbols of female fertility, hares have long been symbolic of sexual appetite or reproductive prowess.
Hares were often buried alongside humans during the Neolithic age in Europe. Archaeologists have deciphered this as a religious ritual, the rabbits representing rebirth.
So, if you’re looking for an Easter afternoon activity and an egg hunt doesn’t grab you, remember the rabbits.
