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in the book "Ostara, Customs, Spells, and Rituals for the Rites of Spring," by Edain McCoy.

There is a controversy spreading across the Web which states that the only apparent reference to a Teutonic goddess Eostre comes from a historian monk known as the Venerable Bede (673 735) He wrote in De Temporum Ratione (The Reckoning of Time) "Eostur-monath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. (corresponding to our month of April)...... Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance."

Other authorities have pointed out that there is no mention of the goddess Eostre in any of the oral traditions of the Germanic people. Yet, several centuries later, Jacob Grimm published a collection of German myths and oral history. He devoted several pages to a discussion of the goddess Ostara. He felt that it was highly unlikely that Bede would have made up a pagan goddess. From the Anglo-Saxon month name, Eostur-monath, he then reconstructs an Old High German equivalent, Ostara. (from Wikepedia)

Thus, it is quite likely that there was some form of oral tradition regarding a goddess of the dawn and the east. In Southern Europe there was also a goddess named Eos, who was a goddess of the dawn. Other researchers speculate that Eostre may have evolved from the Assyrian Ishtar and the Babylonian Astarte. There is a mythic tale about a giant egg which falls out of the skies into the Euphrates. The egg hatches and becomes the goddess Astarte.

The symbols associated with Ostara include the hare and eggs. This is not surprising for a festival of spring. Eggs have long been used as symbols of rebirth and fertility due to the laying cycle of hens. Hens require at least 12 hours of daylight to produce eggs. When the only form of light was natural light, the hens would lay no eggs during winter. So the people of that time would naturally be very excited when the hens would begin laying eggs again, normally around the time of the Spring Equinox. There are customs from all around the world of traditions of dying and decorating eggs to be given away as a symbol of rebirth.

By the same token, rabbits have been viewed as a symbol of fertility in many cultures and Eostre was said to have had the head of a hare. The hare was also sacred to Astarte. Rabbits, as everyone knows, are prolific

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