The Jehovah’s Witness Christmas Special

My Washington getaway featured a theatrical take on a personal recollection

The piece of paper that would go in the box was an old-school half sheet, the kind you would get in elementary school. It asked for something like a treasured Christmas memory, an awkward question if you were raised Jay Dub.

I was about to walk into Uncle Mike Ruins Christmas, a Northwest improv comedy tradition. Saturday night at the Seattle Center. Year after year, the ribald character Uncle Mike storms in on evolving skits and invariably takes things to a debauched place.

Photo by Todd Goldiner

The room wasn’t full, would seat about 100, and upon entering I folded my half-sheet of paper, dropped it into a box, and took a seat with my party of nine.

Pretty sure my thing was getting read.

It wasn’t just that my Christmas story featured people of color—my sister Gaye and myself—and would allow the darker-hued cast members to be featured. (Though that would most likely factor in). No. My memory was a shoo-in because, how many times does a Christmas improv show get rich new material like a Jehovah’s Witness’s narrative? We tend to keep the memories to ourselves. When Witnesses do open up, the inclination is not to regard our holiday relegation as treasure.

But when Director Doug Willott called out “Donnell” I raised my hand to claim the memory. A few titters seeped out when I said my sister’s name. About a half-dozen openly trans persons in the house, yet the same first-day-of-school reaction. Humans are hilarious.

A librarian character led me and Gaye to sit with our books, making a grandiose comment about the adventures that lie in books as she exited. This is what Christmas parties and pageants and movie treats looked like for us. What did Witness pre-teens who only tolerated the massive reading involved with the evangelical faith think of trading gingerbread for pages?

It never occurred to us to ask. Gaye and I were in another world.

Within seconds, Uncle Mike stormed in with a gang of hooligans whom he claimed were “Protestants” and asked if we’d like to party, “Protestant style.”

At which point Gaye and Donnell broke the time-honored Jack Donaghy party adage: Never leave with a hippy to a second location. The skit ended with Mike’s crew getting high on crazy drugs and convincing me and my sister to crucify a couple of Protestants.

Fact is, those library trips pretty much defined my childhood. I was more than a minority, beyond an outsider, but so what? It was as though I had been born that way.

Books were a defense. Refuge. If you thought about them, you didn’t focus on the odd looks and repetitive questions. These were huge memories. Incredibly private. Yet, all around that laughing room of nearly 100 people at the Seattle Center, a perverse take on what’s lived in my head became a kind of holiday shareware.