Eostre

The history of Easter celebrations in America parallels the
controversies surrounding Christmas. Puritan sects viewed Easter
dimly, as a holiday that smacked of popery. Until the mid-nineteenth
century, only certain Protestants and the relatively small handful of
Catholics in America venerated Easter as a religious feast. American
folk observations of Easter (the name derives from an Anglo-Saxon
goddess of fertility or spring, Eostre, whose sign was the rabbit),
however, date back to the eighteenth century and greatly influence
contemporary celebrations. The Pennsylvania Dutch imported the
Oschter Haws, or Easter Hare, who delivered colored eggs to good
children (or rabbit pellets to the naughty) who put out their hats
for a "nest." By the early nineteenth century, entire Pennsylvania
Dutch villages would turn out with gaily decorated Easter eggs to
play games, including egg-eating contests and "picking" eggs, in
which young gladiators would butt eggs until one competitor's egg
broke. For good health, the Pennsylvania Dutch ate wild greens,
especially dandelion, on Maundy Thursday. They gathered eggs laid on
Good Friday for consumption on Easter, for use in folk medicine, or
as talismans against evil spirits. A favorite Pennsylvania Dutch
Easter bread depicts a rabbit in the preposterous posture of laying
an egg. By the later nineteenth century, most Protestant groups had
eased their opposition to Easter...
Source: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2004.