Where the Easter bunny comes from: the history of the Easter hare

Where does the Easter bunny come from?

It comes from Germany, and it started out as a hare. The first clear written record is a short Latin essay called De ovis paschalibus, "About Easter Eggs", by the physician and scientist Georg Franck von Franckenau, published in 1682. According to the Library of Congress folklorist Stephen Winick, it describes eggs said to be laid by "der Oster-Hase", the Easter hare, and hidden in gardens for children to find. Franckenau says the custom belonged to Upper Germany, meaning the Palatinate, Alsace and nearby areas, and to Westphalia.

Being a doctor, Franckenau also added a very grown-up warning: children who ate lots of the eggs without salt or butter risked an upset. Some things about Easter never change.

How long the Easter hare existed before 1682 is unknown. The Henry Ford museum describes it simply as "believed to have originated in German folklore", with written accounts from the 1680s.

Was the Easter hare a rabbit?

No, the German original was a hare, and Franckenau named it in both German and Latin. Hares are wild, long-legged cousins of the rabbit. The switch happened in America. In Pennsylvania the German word "haws" or "haas" was usually translated as "rabbit", the Library of Congress explains, so English speakers there said "Easter Rabbit".

Winick traced the names through old American newspapers. "Easter Hare" was the usual term until 1893, after which "Easter Rabbit" became more popular. "Easter Bunny" first appears in 1883 but stayed rare until the 20th century. The Henry Ford says that in the early 1900s Americans dropped the older names for good.

How did the Easter hare get to America?

With German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania, who became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. The folklorist Alfred Shoemaker called the Easter rabbit "perhaps the greatest contribution the Pennsylvania Dutch have made to American life". He thought it arrived with the first German settlement at Germantown in the late 1680s, but the Library of Congress calls that "likely an educated guess".

The firm evidence is two drawings by Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734 to 1812), a schoolmaster and fraktur artist, each showing a leaping hare carrying a basket of eggs. Gilbert emigrated from Germany to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1757, so the tradition was in America by then at the latest. One drawing, from around 1800 to 1810, is at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware; the other is at Colonial Williamsburg.

The Winterthur drawing was a lovely surprise. When it turned up at auction, the museum's curator Lisa Minardi told WHYY it had been "completely unknown" before. It was most likely a gift from Gilbert to one of his pupils.

What did Pennsylvania Dutch children do at Easter?

They built nests. Shoemaker described the "Oschter Haws" visiting on Easter Eve: children made nests in the house, the yard or the barn, often from their hats and bonnets, and on Easter morning found coloured eggs inside, "provided the child was well-behaved". Naughty children, his informants said, might find a lump of coal instead.

Joseph H. Dubs (1838 to 1910) remembered making his own nest among the currant bushes around 1850, and Phebe Earle Gibbons's book Pennsylvania Dutch (1882 edition) describes children whistling for the rabbit and hunting eggs after church. Gibbons also mentions a lady in Easton filling nests with a large candy egg as well as coloured ones, an early sign of the sweets to come. WHYY notes that these nests grew into the modern Easter basket.

1. Make a nest. On Easter Eve, children set out a nest in the house, the yard or the barn, often made from a cap or a bonnet.
2. Behave. The Oschter Haws only filled the nests of children who had been good.
3. Wake early. On Easter morning the nest held coloured eggs, and later candy eggs too.
4. Hunt. In some families children whistled for the rabbit and searched for hidden eggs after church.

Is the Easter bunny linked to a pagan goddess?

Probably not, despite how often you will read it. Stephen Winick at the Library of Congress followed the trail back, and here is what he found.

The English monk Bede (672 to 735) is the only source for a goddess called Eostre. He says April was named Eosturmonath after her, but says nothing about hares, fertility or eggs. In 1835 the German scholar Jacob Grimm proposed a German version of her, whom he named Ostara, though no ancient source mentions an Ostara at all. The first writer to link Ostara with the hare was Adolf Holtzmann in 1874, who admitted the Easter hare was "inexplicable" to him and guessed it might have been her sacred animal.

The popular story that the goddess turned a bird into a hare that lays eggs appears only in the 1880s. Winick found its earliest full version in an American journal from 1889. As he puts it, there are "certainly no ancient stories" of this kind. So the Easter hare is older than the goddess story, not the other way round.

Why a hare and eggs, then? The Library of Congress gives the simplest answer: hares, rabbits and eggs are all plentiful in spring, and "springtime makes the connection for us all by itself".

Easter hare timeline

How did the Easter bunny become so popular?

Through cards, toys and sweets. The Henry Ford says that by the late 1800s the Easter bunny was becoming an established American symbol, much like Santa Claus and the Christmas tree, helped along by greeting cards, books, toys, candies and other Easter goods. Its collection includes an Easter greeting postcard from about 1910. Magazines joined in: the Library of Congress notes that Puck's Easter covers for 1899, 1900 and 1901 were the first to show Easter bunnies, and by 1902 the bunnies were wearing clothes and carrying baskets.

The candy egg probably started in Germany too, Winick says, and came to America early. Today the bunny is more likely to bring chocolate eggs or jellybeans than plain coloured eggs.

What does the Easter bunny mean for real rabbits?

Here is the kind part. The Easter bunny is a lovely bit of folklore, but a real rabbit is a living animal for a decade, not a seasonal treat. The RSPCA says rabbits typically live 8 to 12 years, and some live longer. The Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund estimates that caring properly for two rabbits over an average 10-year life could cost more than £11,550, and reminds owners that "rabbits aren't low-maintenance pets".

Rabbits also need company. The RSPCA reports that 42% of pet rabbits in the UK lived alone in 2024, which is far too many for such sociable animals. Our guide to pairing two rabbits explains how to get it right.

If you are thinking seriously about rabbits, start with rabbits as pets: what to know before you get one, then our full rabbit care guide. Our page on what a rabbit costs to buy and keep sets out the numbers, and where to get a rabbit puts rescues first. For fun, there are our rabbit facts and the famous rabbits of books, films and history.