Is the Easter Bunny pagan? Probably not. It seems to have been invented by German-speaking Protestants sometime in the 1600s.
Bibliography:
Stephen Winick, “Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think,” Library of Congress Blogs, April 28, 2016.
Stephen Winick, On the Bunny Trail: In Search of the Easter Bunny, Library of Congress Blogs, March 22, 2016


The creator’s statements appear to be rooted in the source, “On the Bunny Trail: In Search of the Easter Bunny.”
You may be interested in the discussion under the article between commenter J.H. and the author Stephen Winick, where Winick explains his reasoning on the matter.
Yup, the commenter raised the same points - but in a clearer way. (He even mentioned the matrons!)
This is sounding a lot like a telephone game, to be honest:
Partially off-topic, but Interesting tidbit from the article:
Bede’s hypothesis is clearly false: if Old High German borrowed the word for Easter from Anglo-Saxon dialects, the modern German word Ostern (Easter) wouldn’t start with /o:/, but rather some front unrounded vowel; it would be **Estern /e:/ or similar. That *au → ēa~ēo change you see in Old English is so old that it was certainly present in the speech of the Anglo-Saxon priests, OHG speakers would likely simplify the odd cluster into a simple /e:/ and call it a day.