If you grew up celebrating Easter, you probably took it for granted that a Christian holiday about Jesus Christ's death and resurrection somehow involves a lot of imagery around eggs and rabbits. It's even weirder once you stop and think about how rabbits don't lay eggs.
Despite the tenuous connection between the "reason for the season" and a small, furry mammal, an Easter basket just wouldn't be the same without a big ol' chocolate bunny as its centerpiece. But how did it get there? Was it always that way? And how the heck do you make a hollow rabbit out of chocolate, anyway? Read on for the answer to at least some of your burning questions about this curious collision of German folklore and chocolate.
How did the bunny find its way into Easter anyway?
As with many things that happened in the middle ages, there isn't a great historical record about exactly when, how, and why rabbits and Easter became intertwined. Some posit that the hare was associated with the Germanic pagan goddess "Eostre," who — as you might imagine — was celebrated at the start of each spring. This theory makes a lot of intuitive sense and may very well be true, but it's been hard to corroborate historically.
Simultaneously, the hare functioned as a popular motif in medieval christian art for a rather curious reason. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, many believed rabbits to reproduce asexually without losing their virginity, which is … pretty much the exact opposite of how we tend to think of rabbits today. These claims are also hard to corroborate, however.
At the same time, eggs were regarded as a symbol of fertility, given their obvious connection with new life, and some churches would have their congregation abstain from eating eggs during Lent, which heightened its connection with Easter. Painted eggs also date back centuries, predating the notion of Easter candy.
From "Osterhase" to Easter Bunny
Much like BMWs and currywurst, the Easter Bunny is a German export. Though there was never any sense that rabbits laid eggs, the modern conception of the creature comes from the "Osterhase" or "Oschter Haws," an egg-laying hare from Germanic folklore that would leave behind colorful chicken or duck eggs for children who laid out a nest for the mythical being. Some sources posit that German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 1700s planted the seeds for the tradition on this side of the Atlantic.
Towards the chocofication of the Easter Bunny
Given that cacao trees aren't native to Germany or Pennsylvania, chocolate wasn't abundantly available in the early days of the Easter bunny. However, major chocolate breakthroughs in Europe during the latter half of the 19th century put us on the path towards mass production. The 1876 invention of milk chocolate by Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter was a major breakthrough, which eventually spread worldwide with a little help from his friend Henri Nestle. In 1879, Rudolf Lindt's development of the first conche machine (which mixes, agitates, and aerates chocolate) also hastened chocolate's appearance in our candy consciousness.
The chocolate Easter bunny as we know it finally began to (literally) take shape about a decade later thanks to a product development in Germany and an interesting bit of promotion in the US. According to an exhibition within Munich's "Zentrum für Aussergewöhnliche Museen" (Center for Unusual Museums), there's evidence that one of the earliest tins for making a chocolate rabbit can be traced back to 1890, paving the way for the chocolate osterhasen of today.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, a Pennsylvania drug store owner named Robert L. Strohecker made headlines for a five-foot-tall chocolate rabbit he displayed in 1890, which Smithsonian Magazine credits with sending sales of chocolate bunnies jumping. At least one early 20th-century newspaper account noted "the growing popularity in the States of the chocolate rabbit." Molds that could make hollow bunnies entered the picture by 1939, though rationing during World War II halted that hopping momentum until the latter half of the 1940s. Now, you'd hardly have an Easter basket without one.
From mold to basket
So how is a chocolate Easter Bunny born? It's a delicate procedure (especially in the case of larger chocolate bunnies), but not as complicated as you might think. Essentially, one fills a mold with melted chocolate and lets it sit for long enough for some of the chocolate to solidify on the inside, with the mold rotated so the chocolate forms in an even shell. Then, the excess liquid chocolate is drained out, and what's left cools for a bit longer before the mold is carefully removed and any excess chocolate is trimmed away. It's not rocket science, but the end product has contributed almost as much to humankind over the years.
Hate hollow chocolate bunnies? Blame our weak teeth.
Though many a disappointed child would disagree, it turns out there's a pretty good reason why bigger chocolate bunnies have a hollow center: to save your teeth. We can only bite through so much solid chocolate before our chompers give out, and an emergency trip to the dentist isn't part of anyone's ideal Sunday.
"If you had a larger-size bunny and it was solid chocolate, it would be like a brick; you'd be breaking teeth," Mark Schlott, VP of Operations at major chocolate bunny manufacturer R.M. Palmer, told Smithsonian Magazine.
Of course, it just so happens that what's best for your teeth also helps confectioners cut down on chocolate costs, but let's chalk that up to a coincidence.
So there you have it: The chocolate Easter bunny is a 130-year-old Pennsylvanian of German descent who's missing his internal organs. May this curious example of cross-cultural candies live forever.
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