Blue Christmas with Lea Delaria

Has Lea DeLaria been naughty or nice?

Let's get real: if Santa Claus is keeping track of comedians, then DeLaria knows on exactly which list you'll find her name.

"I'm the bad girl of lesbian comedy," says DeLaria, who has been performing stand-up around the globe for more than 25 years and is one of a handful of comics with nearly universal recognition in the LGBT community. "We can talk about the good girls of lesbian comedy; you know, Kate Clinton and the good girls," she continues of her notorious reputation.

"Then there's me and Sandra [Bernhard]. We're the bad girls. We say the shit people think but won't talk about. I talk about dildos! Ah!" she laughs, mocking the horrified yelp of the prudish. "Hell, dildos are so fucking old even I don't want to talk about them anymore. But I remember the first time I said the word 'dildo' on stage, you could hear everyone's sphincters slam shut. I thought, 'Well, I shall proceed.'"

No promises that dildos will be under the tree, but there will be plenty of raucous holiday cheer during DeLaria's holiday show for Upstage at the Calderwood. Her combination of comedy and jazz music serves as the inaugural performance for the Huntington Theatre Company's new winter cabaret series. The main focus will be on DeLaria's critically acclaimed jazz styling; her latest album, 2008's The Live Smoke Sessions earned her first Grammy nomination for best Jazz Vocal Album. For the concert, she plans to focus on campy, forgotten tunes and even some group sing-along opportunities.

But when she's not singing, her barbed wit is bound to make an appearance, too.

"It's not going to be a warm and fuzzy Christmas show," says DeLaria. "I make fun of Christmas. It's a chance for people to go, 'Christmas sucks!'"

"Besides," she adds. "Christmas is really for gay men. Fags love Christmas because you can dress your whole house up in drag. For dykes it's harder. There's all that food to eat."

It's that kind of bold humor, one that sometimes divides even the LGBT community into love-her-hate-her camps, that has earned DeLaria a fair amount of controversy over the years. Between the foul mouth, sexually charged humor, and audacious statements (referring to Hillary Clinton as "a first lady I could fuck" during an early '90s march on Washington, for instance), DeLaria might as well find a dentist who has stock in soap.

But she says that she has no regrets about others' perceived lines of sanitation.

"Fuck no!" she exclaims. "I've never regretted a thing I ever said."

Still, that reputation for controversy precedes her in nearly every profile written and nearly every review of her shows. So does her other footnote in the LGBT annals of history: that she was the first gay comic to wear her sexuality on her sleeve doing the late night talk show circuit, announcing herself as a "b-i-i-i-g dyke!" during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1993. DeLaria's acclaimed work as a jazz musician often plays second fiddle to that legacy, a somewhat unfortunate fact when one considers that the genre's notoriously homophobic reputation potentially makes that success the far more groundbreaking aspect of her career.

"I absolutely think that exists," says DeLaria about anti-gay sentiment in the jazz industry. "I think that other jazz musicians have had their careers hurt by it. ... I know that gay men are completely and utterly oppressed in jazz. I think the only reason [she is more accepted] is that as a butch dyke I can actually sit down with these cats and make them laugh. They don't feel threatened by me. Hell, they're always really happy cause really hot girls come to the stage door!"

Besides her jazz success, DeLaria currently stars on the soap opera One Life to Live, has appeared on numerous Broadway stages, written a book, and generally established herself as a Drag King of All Media. Yet, the controversial comic bit continues to doggedly stick at the top of her pop culture resume.

"The problem with the out comedian thing is, it's so old," says DeLaria. "I'm glad people remember it and talk about it, but the reality is, I've been much more than that for a long time."

Maybe so; but mostly she's been naughty, all year long.

Lea Delaria performs December 11 - December 13 at the Huntington Theatre Company's "Upstairs at the Calderwood" (Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston). Two shows (8 p.m. and 10 p.m.) each night; tickets $25. For more info, visit: huntingtontheatre.org or delariadammit.com.