Austin Brown was more than 46 minutes into his sit-down on Big Boy’s Neighborhood when the host changed the subject. “But you grew up Jehovah Witness,” Big Boy said. “Yes, I did,” Austin answered.
Austin is a singer-songwriter and the only son of Rebbie Jackson, the oldest of the Jackson children. That makes Michael his uncle and Janet his aunt. In the interview, posted on the show’s BigBoyTV Plus channel in April 2025, Big Boy said he’d seen a breakdown of what “your uncle MJ” did before Christmas. Then he asked Austin to explain the story himself.
Austin started with what his childhood didn’t include. “I didn’t grow up with holidays,” he said. “I didn’t celebrate my birthday for the first time till I was 21.”
He didn’t offer it as a complaint. “You know, you don’t miss what you don’t have, right?” he told Big Boy.
The rest of the family did things differently, and at Christmas time that was hard to miss. “My other cousins would get gifts,” Austin said, with “wrapping and all that stuff.” Austin was the nephew from a home that didn’t keep the holiday.
Two of the grown-ups had already thought about that.
What Michael and Janet set aside for him
“On the low, when I would be up there, there would be a few gifts with my name on it with no Christmas wrapping over it to the side,” Austin said, “and they’d say, ‘Don’t tell your mom.'”
No Christmas paper, then. A few things with his name on them, put off to the side, and four words to go with them.
Big Boy wanted to be sure who “they” were. “This is Michael,” he said. Austin added a second name: his Aunt Janet.
“They both were very cognizant,” he said. The two of them “made sure that I felt included,” he went on, and that he “didn’t miss out on anything.”
Austin doesn’t say in the interview how many Christmases this went on for, or what was inside. What stayed with him was the attention, coming from an uncle and an aunt who had plenty of other places to be. “Even though they were incredibly busy, they were very there and attentive in many ways,” he said.
He didn’t stop at those two, either. “All my aunts and my uncles, they were all incredibly kind and I’m thankful for that.”
Watch Austin Brown tell the story on Big Boy’s Neighborhood
The Jehovah’s Witness question comes at about 46:25, and Big Boy asks for the Christmas story at about 46:31. Austin gets to the gifts at about 47:10 and names Janet a few seconds after that.
Right afterwards, the conversation turns to the mom who wasn’t supposed to hear about any of it. “My mom’s the oldest,” Austin said of Rebbie. The family has a name for her, he explained: “They call her Kate number two.” He added that “she’s like a mommy figure.”
A little earlier in the same interview, at about 45:25, Austin spots a photo on the studio wall. “That’s me and Uncle Mike right there,” he said. It was taken in Las Vegas, and he had the date ready: “2008 February 9.” He called it “a magic moment,” sitting there with Michael Jackson.