The holy Easter Bunny - chickens and hares were sacred to Ancient Brits

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/leap-of-faith-ancient-britons-viewed-hares-chickens-as-gods-easter

[Erpingham]

Easter is an important British festival, yet none of its iconic elements are native to Britain.

This is a silly statement.  Easter (also not native to Britain) arrived long after the animals did.

[Nick Harbud]

Hares and chickens were both farmed for food during the Roman occupation of Britain, but in the economic collapse following the Roman withdrawal in 410AD rabbits became locally extinct and the populations of chickens and brown hares crashed.

I am more shocked by this statement.  I mean, any farmer can tell you how difficult it is to eradicate rabbits, yet without the protection of some Romano-British animal cruelty league (backed up by a bunch of burly legionaries) there was evidently nothing to stop the local peasants from rampaging amongst the poor fluffy creatures and turning them into Sunday lunch.

Truly terrible times.... 

[RichT]

I wonder. Rabbits now tend to be somewhat ubiquitous and plentiful, not least because they breed like, well, rabbits. But before all their natural predators had been systematically exterminated, rabbits might have had a tougher time of it. I know that round our way, since the red kites moved in, there have been far fewer rabbits, or at least fewer obvious ones.