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Bob Dylan’s Christmas Lights!
My favorite Dylan has always been Dylan McKay, so I don’t have my master’s in Bob Dylan, but if I did, I’d know that his annual Christmas light display is a thing. For over ten years, Bob Dylan’s neighbor, Merrill Markoe, who is a writer and comedian, has been documenting the fuck effort Christmas display outside of his home in Malibu. Merrill started posting about Bob Dylan’s Christmas display over a decade ago because she wanted the world to see his Charlie Brown Christmas tree of a light display.
In 2014 and 2018, Merrill wrote odes to Bob Dylan’s Christmas display for Vice, writing that many of her Malibu neighbors hire a company to do up their front yards like a “four-star hotel” or “outdoor restaurant courtyard.” But not Bob Dylan! I mean, Bob may have hired a performance artiste to do a piece on how much he hates Christmas decorations. Probably not, though, and Merrill says that she was always intimidated to decorate her own yard until she feasted her eyes on Bob Dylan’s inspirationally lazy Christmas decorations. via Vice:
So intimidated was I that for many years I never decorated my yard. It seemed too daunting, too expensive. And then, in 2008, the veil was lifted. A Christmas miracle occurred. A new role model appeared before me, and as luck or serendipity would have it, it was the same role model I used to turn to for creative and lifestyle advice as a teenager.
I speak now of the first time I noticed that Bob Dylan had wedged a small, decidedly uneven, single strand of Christmas lights into the hedge in front of his estate.
It’s possible that they were there before 2008. I’m embarrassed to say that before then I wasn’t really paying attention. But it also makes sense that this was the very beginning, since he released his one and (so far) only Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, in 2009.
Here are pics of Bob Dylan’s Christmas lights looking like they got blown in the wind and then some:
bob dylan’s christmas lights are the reason i look forward to christmas pic.twitter.com/mm1Oikkfh1
— rachel ♡ ❀ (@bobdylansbaby) December 24, 2021
The last pic is of this year’s display, which doesn’t look as drunk as the years before. This is why Merrill says that she’s retiring from the Bob Dylan’s Christmas lights beat:
— Merrill Markoe (@Merrillmarkoe) December 18, 2021
That's why i stopped doing the piece. After the Woolsey fire burned down the original hedge, the grounds-keeper or security guard or other employee and/or relative who is in charge of this task apparently stopped drinking.
— Merrill Markoe (@Merrillmarkoe) December 19, 2021
When I was a kid, we had Christmas lights on our house once and that’s because my uncle did it. But the lights stopped working the next year, and because my mom was busy and tired, she didn’t take them down for a while. Because of this, for years our “Christmas display” was a string of broken lights on the house. So when I look at Bob Dylan’s Christmas lights from over the years, I see some “winner of The Great Christmas Light Fight” shit.
Pics: Twitter, Merrill Markoe