Ostara Lore

The word Easter comes from the pagan celebration of Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, rebirth, and dawn. The goddess was only mentioned once by Bede to explain the name Esturmonath, given to the month April by the early English. Jacob Grimm refers to her by her German name, Ostara, and Adolf Holzmann in his German Mythology 1874 labels her as the goddess of the dawn. Eostre is almost always accompanied by a hare, an ancient symbol of fertility (a hare looks like a rabbit but has longer ears and legs, and does not burrow.)


Accounts of the Easter bunny, or Oschter Haws, first appear in German writings from the 1500’s, but the myth dates back to ancient times. The first account of a rabbit delivering eggs appears in the works of a Heidelberg professor in 1678. German children believed the Easter bunny laid multi-colored eggs the night before Easter, which they found in the garden on Easter Sunday. The Easter bunny’s tale came to America in the 1700’s with a group of German immigrants known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. It gradually became part of American folklore, gaining in popularity after the Civil War.

The first edible bunnies were cookies made of pastry and sugar, created in the 1800’s by the German company Osterhase. The French and the Germans were the first to make chocolate Easter eggs, but they were very expensive.

In most German families the Easter bunny and Easter eggs are an integral part of the celebration of Easter. The bunny traditionally hides the eggs in the garden and the children swarm out to find them. There are a few rare regional variations though, for example a egg-rolling custom called "Eiertruellen" in northern Germany, the search for Easter water or looking for eggs in a manner known to Goethe. In the region of East Fresia in the north of the country the Easter eggs are rolled or thrown from hills and the slopes of dykes, or else knocked together. The low German term for the pastime is "Eier trüllen". Children love to compete against each other, letting their eggs run down sandy hillocks - the winner is the one whose egg arrives at the bottom in one piece. In Weimar a local custom recalls the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who once a year on Green Thursday he would invite children into his garden where he had hidden eggs for them to find. Weimar maintains the tradition to this day and invites youngsters to "Search for the Easter eggs" in the Park on the river Ilm where Goethe's residence stands. The town of Ostereistedt, literally "Easter egg town" in Lower Saxony, has made a tradition out of its name: Legend has it that an Easter bunny called "Hanni Hase" lives here. Thousands of children write letters to him with their wishes very year. The replies are dealt with by an official at the German Post Office.

The burning of Easter bonfires is one of the most common Easter customs in Germany. The practice is especially popular in rural parts of northern Germany but some of the blazes are lit in the gardens of city houses or along the beach of the River Elbe in Hamburg. Villagers, neighbors and friends traditionally gather around these bonfires which are usually lit on the Saturday before Easter starts. In some areas the custom does not take place until Easter Sunday or Monday. The bonfire is fuelled with branches and twigs taken from the garden. The Easter bonfires can trace their origin as a custom back to the 16th Century but probably date back to pre-Christian times. The light from the fire symbolically represents the driving-out of winter and the coming of warmth. The practice is also supposed to increase the fertility of fields. Easter wheels are another variation. Giant flaming wheels made of wood and straw are rolled down hills every year in the town of Luedge in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. They leave a blazing trail stretching for several hundred meters and hark back to fiery wheels used to symbolize the sun. These too, marked the end of winter.