Most Americans' impression of Eastern Orthodoxy likely comes from gold-leafed onion-domed churches, clergy traveling in cassocks and wearing untrimmed beards, and metropolitans in what seem to be Russian versions of the top hat. To many Americans, such images may invoke the most foreign and distant subculture imaginable. Even the Orthodox observance of Christmas doesn't coincide with the American celebration, many think. And what, they might wonder, does this religion have to do with Jesus and Christianity?