Pooka

Easter Sunday '94

The character of the Easter Bunny is non-Christian in origin. The miraculous rabbit who delivers eggs and candy, still a potent symbol of fecundity in the 20th Century, has his origins in the Celtic fertility spirit known as the Pooka. (The Pooka, you may remember, appears as a 6" tall white bunny in the story Harvey the Rabbit). The Pooka is remembered in recent history as a trickster figure; it is from the name Pooka that the term boogey man was eventually derived. A few thousand years back, the Pooka was originally a central European god known as the Boga, a nature god similar to the Greeks' Pan. Some etymologists claim that the Slavic word Bog was derived from Boga. Bog of course, is the Slavic name for the Almighty, and is the predecessor of the English word God. You might find it amusing to tell your Christian friends that every time they invoke the name of God, they are, in fact, praying to a great horny rabbit.