- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
Easter Card, 19th Century.
(Image via Santa Clara County Library)
Though the origin of Easter eggs and Easter bunnies can be traced back to ancient times, our Victorian friends did not begin to celebrate Easter in the way that we know it until the late 19th century. It was then that Easter bunnies became fashionable. According to American author Linda Beard in her 1893 book, How to Amuse Yourself and Others, it was in Germany—not in England or the United States—that children first believed in the “Easter hare.”
“In Germany, too, we should find that children believe as sincerely in the Easter hare as they do in Santa Claus in our country; and the saying, that ‘the hares lay the Easter eggs,’ is never doubted by the little ones.”
By the 1890s, Beard reports that it was not uncommon to see an image of a “hare wheeling his barrowful of eggs” displayed in the United States and England. Newspapers of the late 19th century featured advertisements for decorative Easter cards and Easter eggs made of every material one can imagine. It seems the most unique variety of fashionable Easter egg in 1893 was "one made of plain, hinged wood that, when opened, revealed an interior bursting with rosebuds, violets, and other spring flowers."
Easter Bunny Postcard circa 1915.
For those of more moderate means, plain eggs boiled and dyed were the most popular Easter eggs of all. Onion peel added to boiling water would dye an egg terracotta brown. A spoonful of aniline dye would tint an egg “a fashionable, but unbeautiful” magenta. And if one wanted to dye their Easter eggs a “lovely ebony-black,” the Tamworth Herald advised them to boil them in a mixture of young rye and water.
By 1897, commercial Easter egg dyes were also available. Donnell Manufacturing, a St. Louis based company, was the first to capitalize on the German myth of the Easter hare by using colored lithographs of four white rabbits and eight colored Easter eggs to advertise their White Rabbit Easter Egg Dye—which included directions in both German and English. Their idea caught on quickly and it wasn’t long before imitators sprang up across the country.
Easter Card circa 1908.
(Image via New York Public Library)
Today, the Easter bunny has become an inextricable part of Easter celebrations for most Americans. In many ways, he is as much a holiday icon as Santa Claus.
Happy Easter to all my CWT friends!!!
Sources:
“About Easter Eggs.” The Tamworth Herald. April 8, 1893.
Beard, Linda. How to Amuse Yourself and Others. New York: Scribner & Sons, 1893.
“The Hare and Easter.” American Notes and Queries. Volume 5. Philadelphia: Westminster Publishing, 1890.
Mimi Matthews' Extras, March 25, 2016.