Not Content with taking the Christ out of Christmas — They now take the Easter out of Bunny!

The attack on European-American traditions continues. The Easter Bunny is being rolled over by the speeding truck of multiculturalism. In the following excerpts from the Palm Beach Post of Friday, March 11, 2005 it shows that the Easter Bunny is a “vanishing breed.”

The Easter Bunny is a vanishing breed.

Not that there’s a shortage of 6-foot white rabbits carrying baskets of colored eggs. It’s just that Mr. Shopping Mall Bunny is becoming more politically correct.

The bunny at The Gardens mall Easter egg hunt last weekend — oops, make that just plain “egg hunt” — was called Garden Bunny.

“The name just complemented The Gardens of the Palm Beaches,” mall Marketing Director Jeannie Roberts said.

“Because we’re such a multicultural community, it’s good just to remain neutral,” mall General Manager Sam Hosen said….Palm Beach Mall has no bunny at all.

The rabbit’s name seems to have little effect on shopping habits. “I’m not really sure how religious the bunny is,” The Gardens’ Roberts said.

She’s right. The origin of the Easter Bunny dates to the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, Oestre or Eastre, whose mythical companion was the ultimate symbol of fertility, the hare.

Over the centuries the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus became entwined with the pagan celebration of the annual rebirth of life each spring. German immigrants brought the Easter rabbit across the Atlantic in the late 1800s, and he’s become the secular symbol of the Easter season.

The Garden Bunny may be as accurate as any. Said Roberts: “The name has always worked for us.”