The Dream of the Rood

Of all the writings from the medieval period, The Dream of the Rood is one of the most fanciful. It is written as a person’s recollection of a dream about the cross, and how the Cross told them it's story. However,The Dream of the Rood is more than a fanciful dream, it is a blending of Anglo-Saxon and Christian ideals. These mixtures are evident in the pagan and the Christian symbols.
According to Dream of the Rood: Apotheosis of Anglo-Saxon Paradox, by Robert V. Graybil, The Dream of the Rood is an indication of the spiritual qualities the Anglo-Saxon's held heighest:namely, honor, truth, and courage. This ideals were present before England was Christianized and the are work beautifully into the narrative.
An example of this is when the narrator desbribes the cross as "the triumph-tree" and "the tree of glory shine splendidly, adorned with garments, decked with gold: jewels had worthilly covered the Lord's tree." These kennings are an example of the blending of pagan, with the worshiping of trees, and the Christian, the tree becomes the cross, beautiifully decorated as a symbol of Christ's suffering, death, and the salvation of mankind.
This is also an example of the blending of the Anglo-Saxon and the Christian in that as the pagans had their sacred groves of trees, the church has it "holy relics". In early church tradition, every chapel and cathedral was given a “holy relic”, be it a part of the true cross that Christ died upon, or a fragment of the finger bone of John the Baptist, these relics connected Christians to the first followers of Christ and to Christ himself.
This tradition is even present in the modern Catholic church, Pope John Paul II had the bullet that nearly took his life during an assassination attempt coated in gold and placed in the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, because he believed that one of the predictions revealed to four Portuguese Sheppard children during WWI, predicted his survival of assassination. One of these four children has been declared a Saint, Saint Lucia of Fatima and insures that the bullet will be a relic. If John Paul II is declared a saint in the future, that bullet will have even closer connections with Christ in that it is connected with two saints, the Holy Mother, and Christ.
The "pagan" in the Anglo-Saxon has blended with the "religious" in the Christian through the symbolism and the idea of holy relics and sites. These ideas come through in THe Dream of the Rood.