One fun thing to do, if you ever get the chance, is to reminisce about TV Christmas specials with Jane Lynch.

I am not referring here to TV Christmas specials of the modern day. I don’t know anything about TV Christmas specials of the modern day.

I am referring here to TV Christmas specials of the 1960s and 1970s, the sort that consisted of singing and dancing and skits.

Some were good (the Bing Crosby and Andy Williams specials) and many were terrible. The terrible ones might be even more fun to revisit than the good ones (Search for “Rich Little’s Christmas Carol” and “The Captain and Tennille Christmas Special” on YouTube if this prospect seems intriguing to you).

“Do you remember the Carpenters’ Christmas special?” Lynch asked me. “Oh my God, it was so painful. Hopefully, ours isn’t painful.”

Yes, Lynch has her own TV Christmas special, of sorts. Except it won’t be televised. Instead, it will come to the Clyde Theatre on Wednesday night.

Lynch will be joined by Kate Flannery, who played Meredith Palmer on the NBC series “The Office” and Tim Davis, who was the vocal arranger on “Glee!”

The show is called Jane Lynch’s “A Swingin’ Little Christmas” and the music gives off a Manhattan Transfer/Lambert, Hendricks & Ross vibe, another thing you may have to go to YouTube to familiarize yourself with.

The chemistry between Lynch and Flannery is the genuine article as evidenced by interviews they have done together to promote the show (on YouTube, natch).

Lynch said she met Flannery in Chicago in the early 1990s while both women were working in the theater scene there. Lynch played Carol Brady and Flannery played Alice the housekeeper in a production of the Real Live Brady Bunch at the Annoyance Theatre.

“We’re the same person, in a way,” Lynch said. “We’re Irish Catholic. We grew up in similar Irish Catholic worlds. We love music…of that era, especially. And we’re both really good harmonizers. Our voices mix really well. I’m a little lower. I’m probably the alto and she’s the soprano. She has a studio singer’s voice. Just beautiful.”

Lynch said “The Office” and “Glee” (in which Lynch starred as Sue Sylvester) were both canceled at around the same time and that’s when the pair decided to team up for a cabaret show.

“Kate is a live wire and I’m kind of a control freak, so our dynamic is very…Do you remember that show ‘The Mothers-In-Law’ with Eve Arden?”

Do I! Arden’s co-star in the series was Kaye Ballard and the series was, in terms of powerhouse scene chewing and exquisite comic belligerence, the “Golden Girls” of its day. Reruns can be found on Xumo.

Contrary to the sort of non-nonsense characters she is mostly known for, Lynch said she was a people pleaser growing up who tended to accept unearned blame for setbacks, slipups and other people’s supposed suffering.

She grappled with her sexual identity and started abusing alcohol at 14. Eventually, she quit drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, relapsed in 2017 and quit again.

Lynch said she conquered her people-pleasing tendencies long ago.

“I think in order to work through that stuff, especially if you want to be a writer, an actor, a singer, a dancer – whatever it is – in this culture, you have to want it. You have to want it more than anything else, because if you don’t have that, you’re not going to have the emotional fortitude.”

Years ago, Lynch gave the following advice to actors: “Do it, do it, do it, do it. Do it for free, do it for money, do it when no one shows up, do it when everybody shows up. Just keep doing it.”

It’s not about making yourself do it. It’s about wanting to do it so badly that no one and nothing can stop the want.

“What was it? Joseph Campbell? Follow your bliss? The bad thing for some people is that they don’t know what that is.” Lynch said. “But maybe that means your life is about discovering what that is.

“I, and it sounds like you too…it was never a mystery what I wanted to do,” she said. “And I am grateful for that. Even if it meant that I was emotionally knocked down a lot. I am a very sensitive person, like a lot of artists are.”

Lynch’s metaphor for the resilience necessary to endure, blossom and define success as an artist is a popular toy of the 1970s.

“It sounds like we have a lot of the same references,” she said. “Do you remember the Weeble? That’s what we are. We’re back up and ready to take another punch in the face.”

Asked what she would say to her 25-year-old self if she could go back in time, Lynch said, “Don’t suffer over your suffering.”

“When you are 25 and you are one of the sensitive people in this world,” she said, “you can be reduced to a puddle on the ground by just having someone look at you the wrong way. That’s the way I was, especially at 25.

“I had someone in AA tell me this early on: “When a dog hurts himself, he feels the pain. But you never see that look in his eyes of ‘Why did this happen to me?’ That’s a human thing we can do something about. There’s a Buddhist concept -”

“The second arrow,” I said. “That whole idea that we fire a second arrow into ourselves.”

“Fire the second arrow!” Lynch said. “Thank you! I love that!”

The coming AI revolution promises to alter the lives and careers of artists in positive and not-so-positive ways. The key to weathering these storms, Lynch said, is remaining in touch with humans and that which is human.

“I’m really kind of glad I came up when I did,” she said. “With any huge technology like that, there are going to be really positive expressions and very shadowed, negative expressions because we’re all about polar opposites.

“So my objective is to stay in my heart and continue to stay connected to my fellow human beings. Even though we’re on Zoom, I feel a connection. It doesn’t feel artificial to me. It feels very real. And that’s sort of my litmus test. Does it feel real? Does it feel human?”

Jane Lynch’s A Swingin’ Little Christmas with Jane Lynch, Kate Flannery and Tim Davis: $87.25 – $122.25, 7:30 pm Wednesday, Clyde Theatre, 1808 Bluffton Road, 260.747.0989, clydetheatre.com

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