To feel weird about the Easter bunny?

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

Even though we do Santa Claus? I feel even weirder about the tooth fairy. What does she want with all those teeth?? These lies just feel like a bridge too far somehow.

Which ones do you do in your house? Do you go with huge and outrageous stories about the backgrounds of these characters? Do you forgo the fictional characters and just give them money/chocolate?

I am torn about what to do for Easter. There will definitely be an egg hunt but I'm not sure if it's me or the bunny who hid them...

Tooth fairy I always think of as a way to soften the blow of/distract from painfully loosing teeth.

Easter bunny leaves a hamper of new craft supplies an egg and a toy, at the end of the bed. Because... well the link between that and the resurrection is surely obviously, no?

Well I'm in Australia and 40 and all of my friends (and I) grew up with the Easter bunny. He leaves some eggs at the end of their bed in a basket or Easter bonnet the kids make at school /daycare (interesting that it was originally a hat!) then we have a chocolate egg hunt in the garden.

I've never attempted to make the bunny believable.

Needs
Eoster the goddess of the dawn has a hare for a companion. But as they are both representing rebirth/new life so both are assosiated with spring - the dawning of the new life at springtime and its potential for the coming year.

Many pagans also associated the hare with the moon as they are nocturnal and were thought to be able to have babies every month as per the lunar cycle and were also able to be both male and female to accomodate this.

The hare is mentioned in myth and pagan customs all over the world. I love all that stuff

When DD was little, our milkman Alan delivered two chocolate eggs in a plain cardboard box, with the milk. You could order almost anything from the milkman then. I whisked them out of the box and she found them on Easter Sunday,on the window sill "from the Easter Bunny!" Later on she found the empty box in the garage, remembered the milkman delivering it,and peeped inside and spotted the interior box covered in chocolate egg adverts. She came back in and said grumpily, "I see. So Alan is the Easter Bunny!"

We do Santa because it's such a big thing. We only say stocking gifts come from Santa though, all other gifts are from whoever bought them.

We do Tooth Fairy but I'm not keen. The older one only lost about 6 teeth before she knew. She said "so that's why our tooth fairy is a bit rubbish and forgets... "

I've never done the Easter Bunny.

As willow said the bunny imagery (and eggs) (and associated spring time / growth / fertility festival) is way older than the story of Easter.

Definitely not a recent import!