Why Character Doesn’t Matter Anymore | The We ird True History of the Easter Bunny : CT Weekly

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

I guess Ned Flanders goes to strip clubs now.

Until this week, I hadn’t thought about the caricatured born-again Christian neighbor on the animated series The Simpsons in a long time. New York Times religion reporter Ruth Graham mentioned him and his “cheerful prudery” as examples—along with Billy Graham and George W. Bush—of what were once the best-known evangelical Christian figures in the ...

One-hundred-fifty years ago, a German scholar complained that the Easter bunny was “inexplicable.” It remains so today. The egg-delivering hare has no obvious religious meaning nor clear connection to the holiday. It looks, in some ways, like an ancient myth that has been Christianized, but there is no known myth or fable that gave birth to this pesky rabbit.

And the true story, in fact, may not clear up much befuddlement. The Easter bunny was invented bit by bit and all at once, as people ...