Myth makes a connection between our waking consciousness and the mystery of the universe. It gives us a map or picture of the universe and allows us to see ourselves in relation to nature,…it helps us pass through and deal with the various stages of life from birth to death.

--Joseph Campbell, American mythologist

The wheel of the year has spun us into a new quarter—that dazzling and fickle season of spring. That’s the theory at least, but as I write this, the redbuds are still clenched in tiny magenta fists, refusing to surrender to the persistent chill. Winter is hanging on this year in defiance of astronomical spring, marked by last month’s vernal equinox. Yet, here in the northern hemisphere the sun has undeniably crossed the equator and days are indeed growing longer, so I’m going with the notion that temperatures will rise as soon as April gets its act together. (Last Sunday, in the course of eight hours I observed dark cloud cover, gale-force winds, heavy rain, brilliant sunshine, and hail.)

            Throughout time, humans have marked these cosmic shifts with communal celebrations, complete with symbols that unite the earthly with the divine and attempt to explain our existence, and, of course, suitable mascots. In this respect, the Easter Bunny is the counterpart to Santa Claus, bringing gifts at night for good boys and girls to uncover by daylight. Santa Claus gets a lot more press, so we know more about his origins in mythology and history, yet his ubiquitous presence from November to New Year has thoroughly domesticated him. He’s no longer the mysterious, majestic Father Christmas, striding through the deep forest, a wild gleam in his eye and scraps of holly and mistletoe clinging to his tangled beard. He’s just a fat man in a cheap red suit.

            The icon of the Easter Bunny, on the other hand, retains some shreds of mystery and ancient lore, which may explain why men in Santa suits on every street corner are more ho-hum than ho-ho-ho, while a man in a rabbit suit is sort of creepy. If asked, most people would correctly guess that bunnies are associated with spring through notions of fecundity, fertility, and abundance. Rabbits and their cousins, hares, are champion breeders. Females mature sexually at an early age and can produce several litters a year. Apparently, they can even conceive a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with a first, which puts the travails of female Homo sapiens in a much more cheerful light.

But that’s only the tip of the mythological iceberg. As in so many areas of modern life, we’ve lost touch with the deep layers of meaning that enshroud everyday activities and events. We go through the motions of our days completely unaware that we are embodying dramas of mythic proportions, acting out roles and taking part in rituals that our most ancient ancestors would have recognized. So here are a few things to think about as you’re dying Easter eggs with your kids and grandkids, or hiding marshmallow Peeps behind the tulips on Easter morning.

            In Western culture, we refer to the Man in the Moon, but many other cultures are more familiar with the Moon Hare. That may seem far-fetched to us modern Americans, but remember, we tend to see what we are told is there. Although not everyone can make out a face in the shadowy blotches on the moon’s surface, most Westerners discern a laughing visage in its craters and valleys. But the folklore and traditions of many other cultures, including those of the Orient and Mesoamerica, lead people to see the outline of a Moon Hare, often with a mortar and pestle, pounding out the elixir of immortality in the service of the Moon Goddess. In fact, many cultures, from Japan to Mexico to Britain, have associated hares and rabbits with the moon. In some cultures, Hare was the messenger of the Great Goddess, traveling by moonlight between the earthly and heavenly realms. In many mythic legends, hares were symbols of the lunar cycle, as well as fertility, rebirth, and the Feminine Principle.

            The Easter Bunny is older than the Christian observance of Easter—older even than Christianity itself. The Christian celebration of Christ’s rebirth wasn’t called Easter until the late Middle Ages, when the Church Fathers co-opted an existing pagan festival that celebrated the resurgence of warmth and vegetation, and thus the fertility on which life depends. The pagan origins of the Christian Easter are evident in the fact that it is “a movable feast.” Unlike holidays such as Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, which fall on the same calendar day each year, Easter floats around, landing sometimes in March, sometimes in April. That’s because the date for Easter is tied to the old lunar calendar, and is observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. When the moon was the basis for marking time, the Easter full moon symbolized the Great Mother’s “pregnant” phase, which then passed into a fertile season for the Earth.

Easter began as a spring festival named for the Saxon goddess Eostre. In the early Middle Ages, before adoption of Rome’s Julian calendar became widespread, Anglo-Saxon tribes in Northern Europe called April “Eostre-monath,” Easter-month. Eostre was the northern equivalent of Astarte, one of the oldest forms of the Great Goddess, or Great Mother, in the Middle East. Before patriarchal societies, such as the Hebrews, became prominent, all cultures recognized the Great Mother. Kali, as she is still known in India, is a symbol of Nature’s feminine power to create, preserve, and then destroy, sweeping away the old and generating the new in an endless cycle of days, seasons, years, and eons. In almost all cultures, the Great Mother was also embodied in the Moon, surrounded by her star children, whom she had endowed with “astral” bodies, and served by her messenger, the Hare.

So how do eggs come into this picture? Ancient peoples certainly knew that rabbits don’t lay eggs, but imaginations that conjured winged horses, talking snakes, and pipe-playing goats were clearly going for something beyond the literal. It doesn’t even take much imagination to see eggs as symbols of fertility and rebirth. According to many mythologies, the Great Mother Astarte/Eostre brought our world into existence by first laying the Golden Egg of the sun. In other versions of the story, the whole universe came into being when it hatched from a primordial World Egg (the Big Crack?). Ancient Persians began the tradition of marking their New Year, which began at the vernal equinox, by presenting each other with colored eggs, usually red, the life-color.

From such cosmic beginnings came jelly beans, bunny-shaped chocolates, and large festive hats. It’s great fun, the modern way of celebrating our emergence from a long, chilly hibernation. But this Easter Sunday, in the spirit of historical inquiry, take a step back in time and gaze up at the full moon. See if you can trace the faint outline of the Moon Hare, as your ancient predecessors might have done on such a night. If you still see a laughing man, that’s okay. A full moon is enchanting all by itself, any time of year, whether you see something else up there or not. And an Easter Moon holds the added promise of much needed color, vegetation, and warmth for us Earthlings.

April is being very coy this year, living up to its reputation as the cruelest month, but as long as the trend is positive and the Cadbury Crème Eggs hold out, I think I can just manage.