The BIG Bunny lie: Why we bear false witness for chocolate
Sunday, 5 April 2026
Kevin Norquay is a senior writer for The Post and Sunday Star-Times. This is his weekly explainer.
It’s a time when Christians celebrate the resurrection, and the Easter Bunny hides chocolate around the garden to be discovered and devoured by happy children.
But hang on a minute. Doesn’t The Ninth Commandment say we shouldn’t bear false witness? (Lie, in other words.) Yet here we are celebrating a holiday for a religion that prizes the truth, attributing false magical powers to a rodent.
How does that work, ethically? And while we’re about it, another Easter myth (Catholic) is that all the church bells whizz off to Rome for a few days, then return bearing chocolate treats.
That one seems more believable than an egg-bearing bunny, which isn’t saying much. But both present a moral paradox.
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How can God dictate we tell the truth, yet we tell kids that chocolate is delivered by bells and bunnies?
Apparently, it’s all in the type of lie - the Ninth Commandment is a warning not to indulge in malicious lies, ones that harm, defraud or blame.
A magical story told to inspire faith or fill a child with wonder, isn’t a lie. It’s a fiction; Mickey Mouse, Moby Dick, Harry Potter and the Loch Ness monster aren’t lies.
Or it’s a parable, a miracle, and one that is well-suited to the actual tale of the resurrection. Jesus dies and miraculously rises from the dead. So the Easter Bunny and Easter Bell are miracles of sorts.
Also known as 'white lies' or 'myth-making,' they’re meant to provide comfort, or celebrate a tradition.
Other lies are used to instil good behaviour (Santa knows whether you’ve been naughty or nice; if the wind changes that ugly face you’re making will stay that way).
Overall, we’re pretty good at bullshitting children. From the bunny, it’s just a short hop to the stork and the tooth fairy.
Those of you with deprived childhoods, or no children of your own, may have missed out on these, so I will briefly explain. It may make you rethink everything.
Babies are in fact delivered by stork, swaddled in a nappy that dangles from its beak. There are even illustrations that prove this to be true.
And should your baby teeth fall out, just leave them under your pillow, or on a bedside cabinet and when you wake up, they will have been replaced by actual money.
This too is true, as it happened to me personally, and to my own children as well.
These stories aren't just random fibs; they’ve been passed down through generations, they’re cultural icons, with chocolate and money sometimes attached.
At a stretch, you could argue the Easter Bunny is a moral story: believe and magic will happen.
The bells are theology: we are silent when sad and joyous when good things happen, like Christ bounding back to life.
The stork? Biology, the mystery of life, and a way (along with the birds and the bees) of avoiding those awkward questions about whether babies actually come from a beak or a cabbage patch.
The Tooth Fairy is an early economics lesson.
We tell these 'lies' to make the world a better place for children, when adults all know scary people run the world powers, and we have no control over our destiny (please don’t tell your kids that).
How were these “not actually lies” born, you are asking. Thanks for that, let me explain.
The bunny traces back to German Lutherans, originally as a Santa-like judge evaluating whether children were good or obedient at the start of the Easter season.
The bells are a French and Belgian tradition (though the Germanic bits of Belgium can veer toward the bunny). In Catholic tradition, church bells are silenced on Maundy Thursday to mourn the death of Jesus.
Parents told children the bells (or their clanging, at least) have flown to Rome to visit the Pope and be blessed. On Easter Sunday they return, 'dropping' chocolate treats on the way.
Apparently, the stork was popularised by Danish children’s author Hans Christian Andersen in his 1838 fable The Storks, and parents seized on that as a way to avoid ‘the talk’. Storks are said to be attentive parents themselves, and so …
Norse warriors wore children's teeth into battle as good luck charms (the teeth weren’t such good luck for those being pillaged by Vikings).
As well, the French had a mouse (La Petit Souris) who swapped teeth for coins, but the mouse has now lost its job to the tooth fairy, who was obviously much cuter and more hygienic.
You might recall losing your baby teeth as traumatic. They dangle, your mum tries to help, and when they’re gone, you look hideous. The 'lie' turns a physical trauma into a financial gain.
So there you have it. I’m off to check the garden for chocolate, and to see if there’s a baby in the cabbage patch. Happy Easter.