In France,
the tradition of the Easter Bunny is not as common as in other countries. Instead, the “Cloches de Pâques” or “Easter Bells” are the main symbol of Easter. According to the legend, the church bells in France fly to Rome on Good Friday and return on Easter Sunday, bringing with them chocolate eggs and other treats for children.
Yeah right.
Even as a kid (a French kid I mean), I could never really buy that one…
Would I have fallen for Easter Bunnies more easily?
Probably, because at least they’re cute, and they do have limbs to carry chocolate eggs and hide them in the garden.
However, growing up, I could never quite understand why oh why they (whoever ‘’they’’ might be) decided to pick a creature that did not actually lay eggs to deliver Easter eggs.
A hen would have been an obvious choice (The Norwegian did make that choice), a swan, a duck, a goose, why not? In Switzerland it’s a Cuckoo, and that works too, a dragon maybe… but a rabbit? (I don’t want to even mention church bells any more).
Even a snake would have made sense, for the biblical reference: bringing eggs to little kids would have been a nice redemption for the nasty ‘apple affair’.
But OK, Then, Let’s Go For Easter Bunnies…
They are a popular symbol of Easter in many countries, especially in the Western world, and its origins can be traced back to pre-Christian spring festivals that celebrated fertility.
In ancient times, rabbits and hares were often associated with the goddess Eostre or Ostara, a pagan deity of spring and fertility.
Rabbits being particularly fertile animals, capable of producing large litters of offspring, it made them a fitting symbol for this spring festival.
As Christianity spread throughout Europe, many pagan traditions were absorbed into Christian holidays, including the celebration of Easter, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Easter Bunny became popular in folktales in Germany, where it was known as the “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws”, and it quickly spread across the Christian world, and all the way across the ocean when German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania brought the tradition to America in the 1700s.
Today, the Easter Bunny is a beloved part of Easter traditions in many countries, where children are told that the Easter Bunny brings Easter eggs and other treats on Easter morning.
Rabbits In The UK
Rabbits are such a common sight in our countrysides and even big cities, you would think have been here in England forever, wouldn’t you?
Well they haven’t actually. Yes you heard me: rabbits, however hated as a crop-damaging pest or celebrated in children’s books, are not native to the British islands. (Hares are, in case you’re wondering)
Let me tell you the fascinating story of how they came to be there.
Roman Rabbits
For a long time it has been thought that they were first introduced by the Normans in the 12th century, but archeologist discovered new evidence that it’s actually the Romans who brought them, 2000 years ago!
They (the archeologists) found a tiny rabbit bone at Fishbourne Roman Palace (Near Porthmouth), one of the oldest and largest ancient Roman sites in the UK.
The bone was discovered in 1964 but it wasn’t until 2017 that Dr Fay Worley, a zooarcheologist with Historic England, found that it was the bone of a rabbit.
Carbon dating shows that the rabbit was alive in the first century AD, and further research suggests that it was probably kept as a pet!
However, it wasn’t long before some of them escaped and started to breed in the wild.
If we hop forth to the Normans and after, we know that rabbits were kept by the aristocracy for their meat and fur, but by the 13th century, wild rabbits were already considered a pest in England, damaging crops and garden production, and competing with native wildlife for resources.
But at least this pest could be cooked, and people in London (and everywhere else in the Kingdom, really), started to get used to buying wild rabbits with their fur on, from the markets, game dealers, or even ‘rabbit men’ who walked the streets with the animals dangling from a pole.
But from the 1840s on, vast numbers of rabbits – skinned and packed into crates – were imported from Ostend to be sold in London’s markets. These Flemish rabbits were much cheaper, and became a popular source of meat for the poor of London, and later a staple in middle-class kitchens.
And apparently there was more to it than the Oh-so-British ‘Rabbit Stew’. This book from 1859 gives no less than 124 recipes, from soups and pies to roasts and curries…
Getting Rid Of Bad Rabbits
But Rabbits in the wild kept on making babies like well… rabbits, and in the 20th Century this became a major environmental issue.
In the early 2000s, a report showed that Britain’s estimated 40 million rabbits cost the economy more than £260 million a year in damages to crops, businesses and infrastructure.
However, albeit not native, rabbits are now a keystone species in the UK: they act as landscape managers and a lot of other species rely on them.
Rabbits are selective grazers and keep vigorous grasses in check, thus allowing more delicate wildflowers to grow. They scratch and dig and leave patches of bare earth, it’s true, but these patches are havens for rare flowers and invertebrates, and basking places for common lizards and adders.
When the virus of Myxomatosis eventually hit the British Isles in the 1950s, rabbit populations decreased dramatically.
Crop-growers were pleased, but as a collateral damage it also led to the extinction of the large blue butterfly in 1979 (since reintroduced) and the near extinction of other species that require warm, closely cropped grassland.
Rabbit populations revived when individuals developed resistance to myxomatosis but a new virus (RHDV2), caused a second crash in Britain’s rabbit populations in 2010.
These viruses have become endemic and decimated a fair share of the rabbit populations, and in some places in the UK there are even some projects put in place to replenish them: landowners are being encouraged to create ‘rabbit hotels’ (piles of branches arranged near existing rabbit warrens) to protect them against predators and provide new places for female rabbits to burrow and give birth to their kits.
And for London?
As the city grew and became more urbanized, the fields were replaced by buildings and roads, but the rabbits remained, adapting to their new environment and continuing to thrive in the city’s parks and green spaces. Today, they are a familiar sight in places like Hampstead Heath, Greenwich Park, and Richmond Park.
However, rabbits continue to be a controversial presence in the city. Some people view them as a nuisance, damaging gardens and spreading disease, while others see them as a beloved part of London’s wildlife.
In recent years, there have been efforts to manage London’s rabbit populations in a more humane way, through measures such as vaccination and sterilization. These initiatives aim to reduce the negative impact of rabbits on the environment and improve their welfare.
And not only do you find them in Paul’s garden, they are also all over London, in the streets.
I can think of a few, but feel free to send us your best shots of rabbits in London street art… (just click on the picture to know where they are located)
Helene
