The curse of the chocolate lagomorph

Around this time of year, rabbits begin to pop up in the strangest places. In TV and newspaper ads; on greetings cards; on the sea-cliffs near my home; and as small chocolate representations in the supermarket. Why, I even saw one for sale in our local pet shop, just last week. Now, someone told me that their appearance coincides with, and apparently has something to do with, Easter, but I'm not sure why. Easter is, of course, a Christian festival and, at the end of the forty days of fasting that precede it, Christians have prepared themselves spiritually for the death and resurrection of Christ. So where does the rabbit (and here I include the hollow chocolate bunny) come in?

The truth is, of course, that he shouldn't. Easter is associated with new life and fertility, and they don't come much more fertile than a rabbit. Your average female rabbit (rabbitess?) can, in theory, produce around eight hundred offspring during its nine month breeding period. This is probably why, in the middle ages, the rabbit was seen as a symbol of promiscuity, sexual pleasure, and (let's not beat about the bush) downright sin. Is this really the kind of example the church was looking for?

Well, no, because over the years we've got our rabbits mixed up with our hares. In the medieval bestiary, the hare was a symbol of purity. Unlike the rabbits, who were 'at it like knives', hares were thought to reproduce asexually, changing gender in order to do so; a belief which started in ancient Egypt and carried through to eighteenth century Europe. A single hare in church art represented the Virgin Mary, and a trio of hares (sometimes seen as carved roof-bosses) were symbolic of the Holy Trinity. In the middle ages it was believed that hares were in a permanent state of alertness, never closing their eyes, and being incapable even of blinking; this perhaps explains why they were thought to spend all night staring up at the moon. But, if hares were this alert, one wonders how the Romans were ever able to catch them; because Pliny the Elder wrote that eating hare meat was a cure for sterility, and a means of enhancing sexual attraction for nine days. Why nine, I wonder?

Some think that the rabbit has been associated with Easter since the inception of Christianity. In fact, the Easter Bunny doesn't make its first appearance in written sources until 1682. In that year, German Professor Georg Franck von Franckenau wrote an essay De Ovis Paschalibus (On Easter-Eggs) in which he stated:

In Alsace and the neigbouring regions those eggs are called rabbit-eggs because of the myth that is told to make the simple-minded and children believe that the Easter Rabbit was laying and hiding them in the grass of the gardens, so the children search them even more eagerly, for the delectation of the smiling adults.

So, for reasons we've already seen, it's inappropriate for the naughty little rabbit to represent Easter. But in some cultures, the bunny was highly regarded. The Aztecs apparently had a pantheon of four hundred rabbit gods known as the Centzon Totochtin, that were effectively 'patrons' of drunkenness and partying; in Korean mythology, rabbits live on the moon and make rice cakes; and likewise in Japan, the lunar surface is their abode, but these particular bunnies are engaged in producing sticky rice. However, closer to home, on the Isle of Portland (which is, incidentally, very close to Middenshire) the rabbit is regarded as unlucky, and even speaking its name is likely to offend the locals. This is because their burrowing was likely to cause potentially fatal landslips in the stone quarries that provided the island with most of its income. Portland islanders even now would rather refer to the creatures as underground mutton or furry things. In deference to this belief, posters displayed on the island for the Wallace and Gromit film The curse of the were-rabbit, omitted the 'R' word, and read The curse of the were-bunny instead.

So next time someone mentions the Easter Bunny to you, be sure and point out the error of their ways. Tell them that it's a hare. And then prepare to be condemned as a hopeless killjoy and pedant. But you can always blame me.