OK, here you go…there was once, before Christianity, a wide spread of Paganism (which is a Christian term, but basically, everyone worshiped polytheistic gods and goddesses, and did what today would equate to “magical” rites to bring in the different seasons of the year and what they represented). Christians, once Christianity came into vogue, began trying to convert and save pagans, and one way they did this was by building a Christian-themed festival or holiday OVER the already-scheduled pagan festival or holiday, in this case, what we now call Beltane, or May Day, where the pagans would celebrate the fertility of Spring (I explained it as a fuckfest to someone last night, but that was a little insensitive and over-the-top). One of the symbols of this pagan fertility festival probably would have been a rabbit, since rabbits have a lot of sex and procreate like crazy-what better symbol for fertility? Anyway, Christians co-opted May Day with Easter, and then they sort of stole the rabbit symbolism, so now we have a weird hybrid of rabbits/fertility and Jesus dying and coming back to life. (As Bill Hicks said, can someone tell me what is wrong with our species?)

Easter eggs: 2 reasons
1— roll them.down the.hill to signify the rolling away of the stone in front of the tomb
2— they symbolize new life as the chick bursts out of its shell so new life with jesus bursts forth…
The rabbits I think again are prominant in spring…again new life

Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and laid to rest in a cave. After three days he rose from the dead and left the cave. Unfortunately when he emerged from the cave he saw his shadow and that means at least two more millenia of bad religion on earth.
How the rabbit gets mixed up with eggs is covered well above.

The Christian celebration of Jesus’s resurrection (return from the dead) happens to coincide with the universal celebration of spring fertility, so we get this mash-up holiday. It’s two entirely separate ideas – Christ’s return and “Yay! It’s spring!”.

Eggs and rabbits are fertility symbols. People celebrate fertility in the spring, in the hopes that crops and livestock thrive and everyone has enough to eat. Also, I suppose people cooped up in the winter enjoy a lot of sex, so pregnant women would be another sign of spring and fertility.

Christmas is like that, too. The celebration of Christ’s birth is mixed up with older traditions which have nothing to do with Jesus.

@ladymia69 Easter is actually closer to Eostre or Ostara (depending on the dialect), a northern European spring fertility festival. The name is a direct descendant.

And the word ‘paganus’ originated as a word meaning basically ‘hick’ or ‘bumpkin’, used by the army to refer to non-army people and particularly those not in the urban centers. The Christians picked it up because they conceived of themselves as “God’s Army” (now the name of a right-wing terrorist group, by the way), and therefore the polytheists were relegated to ‘paganus’.

Then someone added zombie Jesus into the mix and you have current day Easter. It’s magically delicious.

@incendiary_dan Thanks for beefing up my answer :)

@incendiary_dan Usually, Ostara is celebrated on March 21, or the first day of spring, but Easter seems to move between Beltane and Ostara (hell, next year, Easter might be in May).

@ladymia69 Yea, Christians are wacky in their holiday scheduling. No respect for tradition at all! :P

fyi, schedule-wise Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. I don’t know what the reasoning is but I didn’t make this answer up. Just guessing it could be to corral everyone back to the church after they sober up from the Beltane and Ostara festivals.

The Christians were canny enough to time their major feasts to coincide with seasonal events that the locals were already celebrating, incorporating their elements as part of a process of conversion that co-opted some of the old ways instead of trying to stamp them out. They were wildly successful, as we can see from the fact that the two traditions are closely intertwined to this day.

The range of possible dates for Easter is from March 22 to April 25, depending on the timing of the first full moon following vernal equinox (first day of spring) in the northern hemisphere. So it can never come in May. Today, in fact, is just one day short of the latest possible date. The most common date for it, I’ve read, is April 19th.

The eggs and rabbit are remnants of the pagan equinox celebration that Easter replaced. The process is called ‘syncretism’ and, like @Jeruba said, it strategically placed celebrations for important Christian events into the holes made by the extant religion by incorporating the mostly-harmless aspects.
Unlike Christmas and All-Hallows Eve, which did not have a fixed date to begin with, Jesus’ death and resurrection are explicitly stated as happening around Passover, and indeed, are a reflection of that Jewish holiday. As luck (?) would have it, the timing works out favorably for the substitution. Both occasions have new life as a major theme, so it works better than you’d think. I have seen the egg made into a symbol of the Trinity – three things in one – but have never heard of a use for the rabbit.

Here’s a pretty decent one.
http://endrtimes.blogspot.com/2008/03/pagan-worship-of-easter.html

I believe the timing is related to the Jewish Calendar, which celebrates Passover at a time which coincides with the moon and such. The story goes that Jesus came into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, and was crucified on that Friday.

The word ‘easter’ is derived from the Latin, estres, meaning the period of reproduction in animals. Estrus is the peak of sexual cycle in animals, culminating in ovulation, heat or rut, especially in female mammals Was estrus named for a goddess or a goddess named after estrus?

and/or . . .

“The term ‘Easter’ is not of Christian origin. It is another form of Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean goddess, the queen of heaven—who is another form of Ishtar, Babylonian and Assyrian goddess, associated with love, fertility, and war

The term Easter was derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘Eostre,’ the name of the goddess of spring.[who may be another variant of Astarte/Ishtar]. Her symbol/avatar was the rabbit for fertility. In her honor sacrifices were offered at the time of the vernal equinox,

If this thread holds Jesus was sacrificed to a fertility goddess. Somewhere between the 3rd and 8th century AD/CE there was a coverup, creating a “Christian” Easter.

See @ladymia69 The trappings of Easter are left over from Roman pagan fertility celebrations. Same with Christmas. The decorations, gift giving and partying are left over from Roman winter festivals.

@josie Isn’t that pretty much what I already said in my answer??

Most pre-Christian pagan religions were centered around a god of the sun, who was generally thought to have been born around Christmas. The Christians placed Christmas on top, but adopted the same story more or less, so that the pagans could be “weaned” from their “heathen” practices.

From the GuardianUK:

The pagan roots of Easter
Heather McDougall

From Ishtar to Eostre, the roots of the resurrection story go deep. We should embrace the pagan symbolism of Easter

Easter is a pagan festival. If Easter isn’t really about Jesus, then what is it about?

Today, we see a secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates the resurrection. However, early Christianity made a pragmatic acceptance of ancient pagan practises, most of which we enjoy today at Easter.

The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too.

…......Easter is essentially a pagan festival which is celebrated with cards, gifts and novelty Easter products, because it’s fun and the ancient symbolism still works. It’s always struck me that the power of nature and the longer days are often most felt in modern towns and cities, where we set off to work without putting on our car headlights and when our alarm clock goes off in the mornings, the streetlights outside are not still on because of the darkness.

What better way to celebrate, than to bite the head off the bunny goddess, go to a “sunrise service”, get yourself a sticky-footed fluffy chick and stick it on your TV, whilst helping yourself to a hefty slice of pagan simnel cake?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-pagan-symbolism

Happy Easter everyone!