This Sunday at the tortoise will will be deconstructing the ideas of easter and this supposed bunny. So I went to Wikipedia to find out a little cultural history and found it to be very informative. Here is a good look at what they had to say:
English and German
The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word ?astre or ?ostre (IPA: [?æ??stre, ?e?ostre]), which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath (Old English "?ostre month"), a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede, who writes that the month is named after the goddess ?ostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.[4] Bede notes that ?ostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, yet that feasts held in her honor during ?ostur-monath had gone out of use by the time of his writing and had been replaced with the Christian custom of "Paschalseason".
Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of a cognate form of ?ostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as *Ostara.
Since Grimm's time, linguists have identified the goddess as a Germanic form of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, *Hausosand theories connecting ?ostre with records of Germanic Easter customs (including hares and eggs) have been proposed.
Modern German features the cognate term Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages generally use the non-native term pascha for the event (see below).
Semitic, Romance, Celtic and other Germanic languages
The Greek word ????? and hence the Latin form Pascha is derived from Hebrew Pesach (??????) meaning the festival of Passover. In Greek the word ????????? (upstanding, up-rising, resurrection) is used also as an alternative.
Christians speaking Arabic or other Semitic languages generally use names cognate to Pesa?. For instance, the second word of the Arabic name of the festival ??? ????? ??d al-Fi??, [?i?d ælfis??] has the root F-?-?, which given the sound laws applicable to Arabic is cognate to Hebrew P-S-?, with "?" realized as /x/ in Modern Hebrew and /?/ in Arabic. Arabic also uses the term ??? ??????? ??d al-Qiy?mah, [?i?d ælqiyæ?mæh], meaning "festival of the resurrection", but this term is less common. In Maltese the word is L-G?id. In Ge'ez and the modern Ethiosemitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, two forms exist: ??? ("Fasika", f?s?k?) from Greek Pascha, and ???? ("Tensae", tin??'?), the latter from the Semitic root N-?-', meaning "to rise" (cf. Arabic nasha'a—? merged with "sh" in Arabic and most non-South Semitic languages).
In all Romance languages, the name of the Easter festival is derived from the Latin Pascha. In Spanish, Easter is Pascua, in Italian and CatalanPasqua, in Portuguese Páscoa and in Romanian Pa?ti. In French, the name of Easter Pâques also derives from the Latin word but the s following the ahas been lost and the two letters have been transformed into a â with a circumflex accent by elision. Additionally in Romanian, the only Romance language of an Eastern church, the word Înviere (resurrection, cf. Greek ?????????, [anástasis]) is also used.
In all modern Celtic languages the term for Easter is derived from Latin. In Brythonic languages this has yielded Welsh Pasg, Cornish and Breton Pask. In Goidelic languages the word was borrowed before these languages had re-developed the /p/ sound and as a result the initial /p/ was replaced with /k/. This yielded Irish Cáisc, Gaelic Càisg and Manx Caisht. These terms are normally used with the definite article in Goidelic languages, causing lenitionin all cases: An Cháisc, A' Chàisg and Y Chaisht.
In Dutch, Easter is known as pasen and in the Scandinavian languages Easter is known as påske (Danish and Norwegian), påsk (Swedish), páskar(Icelandic) and páskir (Faeroese). The name is derived directly from Hebrew Pesach.[5] The letter å is a double a pronounced /o?/, and an alternate spelling is paaske or paask.
Slavic languages
In most Slavic languages, the name for Easter either means "Great Day" or "Great Night". For example, Wielkanoc, Ve?ká noc and Velikonoce mean "Great Night" or "Great Nights" in Polish, Slovak and Czech, respectively. ???????? (Veligden), ????????? (Velykden), ???????? (Velikden), and ?????????? (Vyalikdzyen') mean "The Great Day" in Macedonian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Belarusian, respectively.
In Croatian, however, the day's name reflects a particular theological connection: it is called Uskrs, meaning "Resurrection". It is also called Vazam(Vzem or Vuzem in Old Croatian), which is a noun that originated from the Old Church Slavonic verb vzeti (now uzeti in Croatian, meaning "to take"). InSerbian Easter is called Vaskrs, a liturgical form inherited from the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic. The archaic term Velja no? (velmi: Old Slavic for "great"; no?: "night") was used in Croatian while the term Velikden ("Great Day") was used in Serbian. It is believed that Cyril and Methodius, the "holy brothers" who baptized the Slavic people and translated Christian books from Greek into Old Church Slavonic, invented the word Uskrs from the Croatian word krsnuti which means "to enliven".[6] It should be noted that in these languages the prefix Velik (Great) is used in the names of the Holy Week and the three feast days preceding Easter.
Another exception is Russian, in which the name of the feast, ????? (Paskha), is a borrowing of the Greek form via Old Church Slavonic.[7]
Finno-Ugric languages
In Finnish the name for Easter pääsiäinen, traces back to the verb pääse- meaning to be released, as does the Sámi word Beassážat. The Estonian name lihavõtted and the Hungarianhúsvét, however, literally mean the taking of the meat, relating to the end of the Great Lent fasting period. However in Hungarian it can also be taken to mean sin of eating meat sincevétek means transgression, sin, vice, trespass, offense.
For more information go to Wikipedia
But here at the tortoise we have a little tweak. Instead of bunny rabbits and eggs like some places throughout the world we decided, "Why not hunt for beer?" 
So Happy Beaster everyone! and come have a great time at the tortoise this Saturday night and a spectacular Sunday morning!
Winters chill is past
At last a celebration
Spring flowers grow fast
Read more: http://authspot.com/poetry/haiku/celebration/#ixzz1KBoYInYf
