__ __ _ _____ _ _ _
| \/ | ___| |_ __ _| ___(_) | |_ ___ _ __
| |\/| |/ _ \ __/ _` | |_ | | | __/ _ \ '__|
| | | | __/ || (_| | _| | | | || __/ |
|_| |_|\___|\__\__,_|_| |_|_|\__\___|_|
community weblog
Bob Dylan's Christmas Lights: A Scholarly Treatise
Starting in December 2008 we noticed that the hedges in front of his property were decorated with a string of Christmas lights. We stopped to look at them because the average version of a decorated yard in my neighborhood looks more or less like an outdoor courtyard at a four star hotel... But Bob's house looked distinctly different. He (or someone on his staff who carries out his tasks for him) had wedged a small, decidedly uneven, single strand of Christmas lights into the hedge in front of his estate.
posted by ShooBoo on Dec 07, 2025 at 7:51 PM
---------------------------
ICYMI, written by Merrill Markoe
2018 seems so quaint now LOLsob
posted by intermod at 8:19 PM
---------------------------
Bob knows how to do Christmas right.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:43 PM
---------------------------
I love this.
posted by marxchivist at 8:51 PM
---------------------------
Gotta conserve some money.
posted by fairmettle at 9:59 PM
---------------------------
It's good to see I've got a fair way to go in the 'overanalysing inconsequential random things' area. But now I'm not sure whether I should be relieved or jealous.
posted by dg at 11:26 PM
---------------------------
There'll be a dozen new books analysing this by next Christmas. Dylanologists Assemble!
posted by Paul Slade at 11:39 PM
---------------------------
Speaking of Bob Dylan and the holidays, this from Amanda Petrusich made me chuckle: Me, I like to sidle up to the stereo at a Yuletide gathering—the more staid and elegant the better—play "Must Be Santa," the most patently unhinged cut from Bob Dylan's 2009 holiday album, "Christmas in the Heart," and see how long it takes before someone demands that I stop. (Spoiler alert: I very rarely make it to the end of the song.)
Truly, Bob Dylan is with us from the cradle to the grave.
posted by Kattullus at 1:25 AM
---------------------------
Kattullus: "Bob Dylan is with us from the cradle to the grave."
I'm worried with the latest set of lights, they seem to be flatlining (after years of relatively erratic, though perfectly explicable, up & down vitality).
posted by chavenet at 4:17 AM
---------------------------
Ain't no use in turning on your lights, Bob / The lights I never knowed
And it ain't no use in turning on your lights, Bob / I'm on the dark side of the road
posted by thecincinnatikid at 4:51 AM
---------------------------
Gotta conserve some money.
posted by fairmettle at 12:59 AM on December 8
I see what you did there.
posted by marxchivist at 7:23 AM
---------------------------
I like this. This is good unhinged. Like Charlie (?) from It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia. Unlike the COVID couple above. That's bad unhinged.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:50 AM
---------------------------
It's funny. I passed a place on the way home from work the other day that had just one string of crummy lights along 20 feet of a 100 foot fence outside of a place that cost north of 7 figures. I had the thought that if that was the right amount of Christmas for the people inside, bless them.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:36 AM
---------------------------
> → overanalysing inconsequential random things
aka, every Dylan fan ever since the day he stopped touring under his real name
posted by scruss at 12:14 PM
---------------------------
I still can not believe that he made a Christmas album.
I'll go with Charlie Brown.
I still love me some electrified Dylan from "Bringing It All Back Home" onward. Partial to his mercury period of those three albums .
posted by DJZouke at 12:59 PM
---------------------------