@nprofile1q... I know not all pagans were forced to convert, but that was the predominant mode.
Charlemagne Murders Tens of Thousands of Non-Christian Saxons
To destroy German paganism, Charlemagne proclaimed harsh laws applicable to those Germans under his control who refused to be baptized into Christianity. Eating meat during Lent, cremating the dead, and pretending to be baptized were all made punishable by death. In 768 AD, Charlemagne started a thirty-two-year long campaign of what can only be described as genocidal evangelism against the Saxons under his control in western Germany.
CHARLEMAGNE AND ENFORCED CHRISTIANITY
The sword and the cross: Charlemagne, and two of his armed priests. The Frankish king was directly responsible for the forced and violent introduction of Christianity to much of western Europe. This was at least partially achieved by killing pagans who did not want to convert to Christianity.
The campaign started with the cutting down of the Saxon’s most sacred tree, their version of the World Tree or Yggdrasil (the symbol of the start of the earth and the source of all life in the ancient Indo-European religions), located in a forest near present-day Marburg.
Charlemagne quickly turned to violence as a means of spreading Christianity. In 772, at Quierzy, he issued a proclamation that he would kill every Saxon who refused to accept Jesus Christ, and from that time on he kept a special detachment of Christian priests who doubled as executioners. In every Saxon village in which they stopped, these priests would execute anybody who refused to be baptized.
Then in 782, at Verden, Charlemagne carried out the act for which he is most notoriously associated. He ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons who had been caught practicing paganism after they had agreed to become Christians. Charlemagne’s constant companion and biographer, the monk Einhard, vividly captured the event in his biography of the Frankish king. In it is written that the king rounded up 4,500 Saxons who “like dogs that return to their vomit” had returned to the pagan religions they had been forced to give up upon pain of death. After having all these Saxons beheaded, “the king went into winter camp, and there celebrated mass as usual.” Twelve years later, in 794, Charlemagne introduced a law under which every third Saxon living in any pagan area was kidnapped and forced to resettle and be raised among Christian Franks.
With the use of violent and bloody coercion, Saxon and German paganism was quite literally killed off. Most of the survivors became Christians more out of fear than out of genuine conviction.
Christianity finally spread to the Goths, through a Christian slave named Wulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic. Before the end of the fourth century, Christianity had spread to the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards, and other German tribes within the direct sphere of influence of the Western Roman Empire. By the year 550 AD, the only non-Christian tribes were to be found in Bavaria and those parts of Germany north from there—including almost all of the Danes, Scandinavians, Balts, and Slavs to the east.
Pagan Origins of Christmas and Easter
Through sheer terror, Christianity then became the dominant religion of the previously pagan central Europe. Yet, because some pagan customs were far too entrenched to be rooted out, they were quietly incorporated into Christianity. In this way, Easter, for example, was absorbed to become a celebration of the resurrection of Christ—although its pagan origins are clearly shown in the symbolism of the egg and the rabbit. Both of these come directly from the pagan goddess of fertility, Eoster (from which Easter was derived), who used the egg and rabbit as fertility symbols. The date of Easter—at springtime, when new life emerged from winter, was linked to Eoster, and this was why it was celebrated at that time of year.
The same happened with the winter solstice, which was originally a pagan celebration to mark the turning point of winter. The pagans marked the longest night of the year with a fire, a pine tree, and gifts to mark the fact that they had survived yet another winter. Christianity combined the solstice celebration with the birth of Christ, in this way preserving much of the outer trappings of the pagan celebration which are still kept in modern times.
The church was uneasy with the pagan undertones of the celebration, particularly the “Christmas tree.” This led to the Catholic Church officially banning the celebration of Christmas no less than three times, all of which were unsuccessful.
