When Things Are Taken Too Far:

It's that time of year again, when the religious disappear for a day, sandwich shops have an excuse to close extra-early (or never open, much to my frustration), children collapse in paroxysms of chocolate-induced giddiness, and the rest of us scratch our heads and ponder questions like:

"How did we get from an already dubious story about a Jewish zombie to a rabbit laying colored eggs in the dirt?"

...and other such cognitive chasms.

Fear not. I present, to use a Wikipedia term loosely, a disambiguation of (most) things Easterly.

To begin, where does the name "Easter" come from? It doesn't appear to have a Hebrew precedent, and that's because it stems from Germanic lore. In the same way that "Saturnalia" (the Roman festival observed around the winter solstice) was appropriated by Christians to garner pagan converts and establish a set date by which to observe the birth of their Messiah, "Ostern-monath" ("Ostara Month") was appropriated to represent the day Jesus punk'd the world and stopped being dead for a minute.

Ostara, also known as Ēostre (the spelling should be starting to get familiar now), was an ancient Germanic goddess of fertility, springtime (the two often go hand in hand in mythology for obvious reasons), the dawn, etc. The sunrise she brought to the Old English hills was allegedly carried in by hares, and she is commonly depicted with a hare hovering by her side (amongst a bevy of similarly adorable woodland creatures).

What is the significance of the floating bunny? Legend has it that, to amuse the young children of the land, Ostara would turn one of her favorite pet birds into a hare, and this hare would go around laying brightly colored eggs.

...Wild, isn't it?

Obviously, the poetic implications of a certain Mr. Jesus O'Nazareth rising from the dead when the deciduous world awakens from winter and blooms into life would have been foolish to pass up, and thus, Ostara's month (April), aka the weeks following the spring equinox, seemed like the perfect time to celebrate and thus, "Easter" as a holiday was institutionalized. Once again, like Saturnalia:Christmas, aspects of the pagan ceremonies were maintained (in the case of Saturnalia, gift-giving is one prime example), and thus, somehow, the magical rabbit perservered.

As a final cherry on top, the last section of this article suggests that Ostara herself may have had zero historical precedent, and may have been invented by the Venerable Bede, a famous monk whose writings are the first mention of Ostara in connection to Ostern-monath. Prior to his book, all mention of Ostara disappears. Thus, the Venerable Bede (side note: best name/title combo ever?) may be the Old English answer to Stephen Hillenburg (he of "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" fame).

What does it all mean? For this humble, secular and chocoholic citizen, this particular Easter story suggests that for centuries we have been celebrating an unreasonably well-crafted practical joke on all counts - w/r/t Jesus, the bunny, and beyond. But what else is new?
(History: Eerily repetitive since the dawn of time.)