It's one of the most significant days of the Christian calendar, but many of the rituals and symbols associated with Easter have pagan roots. In Christianity's early days, recruiting the faithful was not an easy task, since most people already had a time-honoured system of beliefs they were comfortable with. To make the religion more palatable, clerics allowed converts to import many of their pre-existing spiritual traditions.
The symbols associated with Easter are a good example of this blending of mythologies. The humble rabbit isn't even a bit player in Christian scripture but, thanks to its enviable talent for reproduction, it was heavily associated with Eostre (also known as Ostara), a fertility goddess worshipped by the ancestors of present-day Europeans more than 1,200 years ago.
According to medieval historians, people turned out to honour the goddess every spring equinox, marking the official end of winter and ensuring a bountiful harvest in the months ahead. The raucous celebrations included plenty of drinking, dancing, song and even - if rumours are to be believed - the occasional human sacrifice. While the more risque elements of Eostre worship didn't survive the transition to Christianity, the goddess' name, the (rough) timing of the festival and the rabbit's central role in the holiday did.
The hare connection proved particularly enduring in Germany, where, for centuries, anxious children awaited the arrival each year of 'Oschter Haws', a jaunty bunny who would leave them gifts of beautifully coloured eggs on Easter morning if they had been well behaved. This practice, too, had pagan overtones - Eostre was born from an egg and one of the popular legends concerning the goddess was the story of a bird who begged to be turned into a rabbit. Eostre granted the wish and made sure the hare was still somehow able to lay beautifully coloured eggs, which it presented to Eostre every spring.
It was also in Germany where the first edible Easter bunnies surfaced, in the 1800s, but they were creatures of sugary pastry rather than the chocolate rabbits of today. When Germans began settling in the US in large numbers, they brought their Easter habits with them and the festival's association with rabbits began to go global.
Like a lot of traditions, the Easter bunny has a dark side. For many well-meaning parents, the cuddly creatures are the perfect Easter gift for a child, but thousands of rabbits end up dead or abandoned when their new owners realise bunnies aren't low maintenance. Groups such as the House Rabbit Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launch anti-bunny-buying campaigns, sometimes calling for boycotts of shops, churches and photography studios that use rabbits as Easter-time props. Among the facts they like to point out: house rabbits live for eight to 10 years, don't particularly like affection or children, love to chew through electrical wire and furniture and, much like dogs, have to be toilet-trained and neutered. The Easter bunny, it seems, is best left as a figment of the imagination.