Years ago a friend's toddler son was in a progressive nursery school. The school was fiercely non-denominational and so as Easter approached the school told parents they would acknowledge the seasonal holiday with a visit from the "Spring Rabbit."
On the day of the celebration my friend told her little boy, "Today the Spring Rabbit is coming to your school." Her son burst into tears and said, "No, Mama, no, I want the Easter Bunny.'' He knew. The Easter Bunny matters.
I know that some Christians think that the Easter Bunny is just more commercialization, but surely our beliefs are big enough, and our faith deep enough, to not be afraid of what came before us. Ours is a culture of assimilation and even our Christian holidays are mostly overlays of ancient religions. That's not a bad thing, just a history thing.
It's true at Easter too. The celebration of spring, of light returning from darkness, is ancient. It was part of Celtic and Mesopotamian cultures. The Bunny — back then he was a rabbit — was part of festivals as early as 1100 BC. Because rabbits are energetic and prolific, they were expressive of the power of life that wakes us from death in the spring.
While our Christian Easter celebrates Christ rising from the dead, it is named after the ancient goddess of dawn, Eastre, and her celebration of the rebirth of the sun.
Yes, I know it is so easy to "tut-tut," or maybe "cluck," about the Easter Bunny and toss off accusations like "exploiting the sacred," but that's kind of lazy thinking. There's more to this special rabbit or he wouldn't have stuck around all this time. As a Christian I think we have to give the Easter Bunny his due.
So what's the Bunny about? He is, of course, about a fairly voracious strain of fertility: The Easter Bunny is a male rabbit who lays eggs in a nest, carries them in a basket, and then hides them for children to find. That's quite a funny picture when you think about it.
But there is something serious to consider about the Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny brings gifts for children but, unlike Santa Claus, who comes into our home and delivers gifts to the safety of our hearth, the Easter Bunny calls us to come outdoors to look for his eggs. The Easter Bunny invites us out into the world.
There is another very old belief that on Easter morning the sun dances. If, as we say, heaven is on earth, then it makes sense that we should step out of our homes or our work — whatever it is we are buried in — to experience it.
The poet Kathleen Norris, who writes about Christianity and celebrates monastic life, offers this from her research: According to scriptural scholarship when Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you," it should be more accurately rendered as "The kingdom of God is among you." So with apologies to ministers who are struggling for just the right words for Sunday's sermon, Easter is less about who is in the pulpit and more about who is in the pews.
In our faith lives we must go inside of ourselves to find one kind of spirituality, but ultimately we each have to roll away our own stone and step out to live our faith in the world. The Easter Bunny calls us outward to join our fellows and to look around our lives.
Hippity-hoppity, Easter's on its way.