When it comes to the Easter bunny, I’ve got some burning questions. Where did he come from? Why does he leave eggs, of all things? Where can I get some candy?
Luckily, in Virginia, scholars can provide academic answers to the frankly odd ways we celebrate Easter—what is up with those eggs? Candace Buckner-Ducharme, professor of religion and culture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, is here to school us on the true bunny backstory.
As far as the Easter Bunny goes, “they’re actually a fairly modern tradition,” Buckner-Ducharme says. The idea of a rabbit associated with the holiday doesn’t appear in texts until the 19th century, when folklorists like the Brothers Grimm wrote of a hare companion for the Germanic pagan goddess Eostre, who is associated with springtime—and is named uncannily similarly to “Easter.” That’s because she is, most probably, the reason we call the
holiday Easter.
Many modern Easter traditions come from pagan ones, including eggs. Pre-Christianity, ancient Roman festivals included eggs as symbols of fertility. “When you think Easter, you think eggs and bunnies, but you also think flowers, new grass, sun, beginning of warmth and spring,” Buckner-Ducharme says. “All of those things are actually more associated with the pagan festivals for spring, and they get adopted, it seems, at least in Britain, around the 8th century.”
Coloring eggs evolved from a need to preserve scarce food—by pickling, boiling, and coloring them to eat in order from least to most fresh. Over time, eggs met the bunny, and Christian and pagan themes blended into one springtime celebration of new life. By the time the Brothers Grimm wrote about the Easter Bunny, he was already delivering eggs—and if you’re lucky, you might be his next stop.
This article originally appeared in the April 2026 issue.
