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by Petplan Australia

Where did the Easter Bunny come from?

As you look forward to a long weekend, spare a thought for the Easter Bunny. The poor soulwill be f lat-out by Easter Monday, having dispatched multi-coloured eggs far and wide, readyfor the f renzy of chocolate consumption that is Easter.But where did this mysterious f igurecome f rom? Here, Sophie Mackenzie looks into the famous rabbit’s origins.

We’ve all heard the expression ‘breeding like rabbit s’,and it ’s thanks to their fecundit y that the creatureshave come to symbolise new life. So it ’s come to passthat rabbit s are associated with springt ime, which ofcourse is when Easter falls.

The legend of a rabbit bringing sweets to children atEaster is believed to date back to 16th-centuryGermany, when the f irst edible bunnies were madef rom past ry. It wasn’t unt il t he invent ion of milkchocolate and advances in moulding technology in theearly 20th century that chocolate bunnies hopped onto the scene.

Eggs, another symbol of fert ilit y, have been given as Easter gif t s for far longer. There’s a record inthe 1,307 household accounts of King Edward I for an order of ‘450 eggs, to be boiled and dyed orcovered with gold leaf ’, and the Fabergé eggs that were presented to the Russian Tsar and Tsarinain the 19th century are st ill t reasured by collectors today.

The Easter Bunny doesn’t have a monopoly on dist ribut ion. Around the world, other animals areassociated with the task. In Switzerland, Easter eggs are delivered by a cuckoo, in Sweden by a hareand in parts of Germany by a fox. In Aust ralia, where wild rabbit s are considered to be pests, achocolate company has int roduced the idea of the ‘Easter Bilby’, an endangered marsupial.

EGGS-TRAORDINARY EASTER FACTS

We buy more chocolate at Easter than at almost any other t ime of the year. The fest ivalsurpasses Valent ine’s Day, Halloween and Mother’s Day, and is second only to Christmas interms of consumpt ion.

Most Easter bunnies are hollow, but there is a growing market for solid bunnies, which arecheaper to manufacture and less f ragile to t ransport .

As the market for Easter chocolate has grown,bunnies have been produced in more and moredif ferent guises. There have been ballerina bunnies,ast ronaut bunnies, bunnies that glow in the dark andbunnies with exot ic f lavoured f illings

In 2006, Harrods commissioned a replica of Lindt ’siconic bunny – except their version was craf ted f romsolid gold, adorned with rubies, cit rine, topaz and

diamonds, and valued at about £20,000

Last year, Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt won an eight -year-long legal bat t le to stop anAust rian compet itor making gold foil-wrapped rabbit s similar to it s own

As well as bunnies and eggs, chocolate chicks are popular, and Americans have a sof t spot forEaster jellybeans, which are produced in limited-edit ion pastel colours

The world’s biggest chocolate bunny was a replica of the well known Duracell mascot ,produced by the South Af rican sculptor Harry Johnson in 2010. The bunny, which was 3.82m talland weighed 2,721kg, was displayed for a week before being donated to a charit y forunderprivileged children

About 80% of chocolate-lovers eat their bunnies’ ears f irst , with 5% start ing at the feet and4% going in at the tail. Who knows what the other 11% do…

What will you and your pet be getting up to this Easter? Let us know in the comments box below.