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→Connection to Easter Hares
人類学者のクリスタル・ディコスタによると、イースター・エッグの伝統とオスターラを結びつける証拠はないとのことである。キリスト教において卵は、フェニックスの卵の図像を通じて、早くも紀元1世紀から再生に関連するシンボルとなった。卵がイースターと結びついたのは、中世ヨーロッパで四旬節の断食中に卵を食べることが禁止されたことがきっかけだと、ディコスタは推測している。ディコスタは、当時のイギリスでは四旬節が始まる前の土曜日に、子供たちが戸別に卵を乞いに行くことが一般的であったことを強調する。断食前の子どもたちには、特別なご褒美として卵が配られた<ref name="D'Costa"/>。
===Connection to Easter Haresイースターヘアーとの関連性 ===[[File:Easter Bunny Postcard 1907.jpg|thumb|An Easter postcard from 1907 depicting a rabbit]]In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves [[easter Bunny|hares and rabbits]].北欧では、イースターのイメージとして、ウサギが登場することが多い<ref name="Bott 2011">{{cite web | last=Bott | first=Adrian | title=, The modern myth of the Easter bunny | website=, The Guardian | date=, 2011-04-23 | url=, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/23/easter-pagan-roots }}</ref> 。 In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves [[easter Bunny|hares and rabbits]]. The first scholar to make a connection between the goddess Eostre and hares was Adolf Holtzmann in his book ''Deutsche Mythologie''. Holtzmann wrote of the tradition, "the Easter Hare is inexplicable to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [[Abnoba]]." Citing folk [[Easter customs]] in [[Leicestershire]], England, where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank'", late 19th-century scholar [[Charles Isaac Elton]] speculated on a connection between these customs and the worship of {{lang|ang|Ēostre|italic=no}}.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Elton, Charles Isaac |author-link=Charles Isaac Elton |title=Origins of English History |journal=Nature |date=1882 |volume=25 |issue=648 |page=391 |doi=10.1038/025501a0 |bibcode=1882Natur..25..501T |s2cid=4097604 |url=https://archive.org/stream/originsofenglis00elto#page/390/mode/2up/search/harecrop}}</ref> In his late 19th-century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cited numerous incidents of folk customs involving hares around the Easter season in Northern Europe. Billson said that "whether there was a goddess named {{lang|ang|Ēostre|italic=no}}, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island."<ref name="BILLSON448"/>
Adolf Holtzmann had also speculated that "the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs" in modern German folklore. From this statement, numerous later sources built a modern legend in which the goddess Eostre transformed a bird into an egg-laying hare.<ref name=Winick2016>Winick, Stephen. [https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/04/ostara-and-the-hare/ Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think]. ''Folklife Today'', 28 Apr 2016. Accessed 8 May 2019 at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/04/ostara-and-the-hare/</ref> A response to a question about the origins of Easter hares in the 8 June 1889 issue of the journal ''American Notes and Queries'' stated: "In Germany and among the Pennsylvania Germans toy rabbits or hares made of canton flannel stuffed with cotton are given as gifts on Easter morning. The children are told that this Osh’ter has laid the Easter eggs. This curious idea is thus explained: The hare was originally a bird, and was changed into a quadruped by the goddess Ostara; in gratitude to Ostara or Eastre, the hare exercises its original bird function to lay eggs for the goddess on her festal day."<ref>''American Notes and Queries'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=-g48AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA64&ots=l0_sPgX_SR&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false June 8, 1889, pp. 64-65].</ref> According to folklorist Stephen Winick, by 1900, many popular sources had picked up the story of Eostre and the hare. One described the story as one of the oldest in mythology, "despite the fact that it was then less than twenty years old."<ref name=Winick2016/>
