Holiday Festival of Lights – The spirit of a joyous season shines on Charleston from Nov. 12th through Jan. 2nd, with the twenty-first annual Holiday Festival of Lights. This incredible display of creativity radiates throughout beautiful James Island County Park, with evenings aglow in the light of a three-mile driving path filled with giant light displays, such as massive gingerbread houses, reindeer and a rendition of the Cooper River bridge.

In addition to this rolling parade of awe, there are numerous attractions throughout the park where families can enjoy a variety of entertaining events, including candy shops in Santa’s Village, carousel rides in Winter Wonderland, and an amazing sand sculpture carved from 50 tons of beach sand. For ticket information and other details go on line at www.holidayfestivaloflights.com or call 843-795-4FUN

Historic Charleston Foundation - The friendly ghosts of Christmas past come alive in two of Charleston’s most famous museum houses, in a spirited revival of family holiday decorations, foods and traditions hosted by the Historic Charleston Foundation from Nov. 23rd through Jan. 6th. Two of the city’s most famous residences, the 1808 Nathaniel Russell House and the 1820 Aiken-Rhett house, will have halls and other rooms decked with Christmas treats and trimming from the post-Revolutionary period to the Victorian era. The lavish displays will offer a trip through time to see how Christmas was celebrated in Charleston’s historic past. For ticket information, go on line at www.historiccharleston.org or call 843-724-8481
 

Performing Arts Center - The beautiful North Charleston Performing Arts Center presents an incredibly-entertaining line-up of shows that includes “A Chorus Line” on Nov. 30th and Dec. 1st, Charleston Ballet Theatre’s “The Nutcracker” on Dec. 17th and 18th, and Moscow Ballet’s “Great Russian Nutcracker” on Dec. 23rd. The center is an acoustical and visual gem, and ticket information for all shows can be found, with seating charts, on line at www.charlestonconvention.com or calling 843-529-5000.

A public celebration of Hanukkah will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday at Marion Square on Dec. 5th. "Chanukah in the Square" will feature music, dancing, crafts and food, including hot latkes (potato pancakes fried in oil) and doughnuts. Charleston's Holocaust survivors also will light a nine-foot menorah.

Spirituals Concert at Drayton Hall - Charleston’s most captivating colonial plantation will reawaken the joyous sounds of those who once worked its fields in the 27th annual Spirituals Concert at Drayton Hall, Dec. 4th and 5th. Spirituals are the rhythmic “a cappella” songs made famous by generations of African slaves on Southern plantations. In this stirring revival concert, descendants of those once enslaved are now the honored guests of Drayton Hall, an enchanting structure built in 1740,that remains remarkably unchanged in its distinctive Georgian Palladian style. For ticket information, contact www.draytonhall.com or call Dawn Brogan at 843-769-2605

A great local excursion that takes a little effort, but is completely free, is a drive and walk to the north end of Folly Beach to look out over Lighthouse Creek and the fabled structure that gives it that name. Folly’s beach-front ride on East Ashley Avenue ends abruptly at the entrance to an abandoned Coast Guard station that now is an undeveloped county park. It’s about a half-mile hike to the tip of the island, which is worth the trek with magnificent views of the Atlantic Ocean, James Island, Morris Island, and the 161-foot lighthouse that has stood firm against the ravages of wind, water and time since 1876. The Morris Island Lighthouse is no longer part of Morris Island, having been stranded by eroding tides since it was abandoned in 1962. It is now the centerpiece of a timeless land and seascape that offers a mesmerizing and memorable stroll to the beach well-named the Edge of America.

Some of Charleston’s most fascinating explorations can be found in some of its most hallowed and haunted ground, among gravesites in historic cemeteries. The old stones of the many churches and temples of the “Holy City” provide as many clues to the past as they do to make it more mysterious. The Circular Congregational Church burial ground on Meeting Street is the oldest in the city, and has a number of head stones marked with “soul effigies” featuring skulls and crossbones. St. Michael’s church yard off Broad Street has a stone that tells the horrors of “strangers fever”, and at St. Philip’s cemetery on Church Street, the haunted legends are so prevalent that the congregation erected a graveyard sign that insists “the only ghost at St. Philip’s is the Holy Ghost”. Some of the fabled graves of early Jewish Charlestonians can be viewed by appointment at the walled Coming Street cemetery of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim synagogue, and a mix of cultures and congregations can be seen in the expansive stretches of Magnolia Cemetery off Meeting Street Road. Magnolia Cemetery was created in 1850, and was once called “The City of the Silent”, where graves include a stone pyramid and baby cradle. 

  Charleston Architecture - The portico is one of Charleston’s most interesting and surprisingly common historic sights, found throughout the city embellishing the front of grand buildings. The term is Italian, literally translated as “porch”, and is a classic concept dating back to ancient Rome and Greece. A portico is typically formed by massive columns that are largest on the ground level, reaching combined height of a raised basement on which the structure is built, to the top of the first floor. If the building includes a second story, another set of columns supports a roof that is usually adorned with a triangular pediment. Although the wood root for “pediment” seems to suggests that it has something to with the foot, historians believe the word is a corruption of “pyramid”, which would make more sense. Although the portico is sometimes confused with the Charleston “piazza”, which means “square”, the piazza is much smaller, and features columns of lesser size. Portico columns are made of brick, usually covered with plaster, while piazza columns are typically solid wood. Some of Charleston’s most impressive porticoes include Market Hall, the South Carolina Society, Hibernian Hall, Randolph Hall, and St. Philip’s Church, the latter featuring a triple first-floor portico jutting into Church Street. 

  Bet You Did Not Know - Charleston has the largest number of existing pre-Revolutionary buildings in America, and no other city in the country has as many as still stand on Tradd Street alone. Although the historic city is filled with buildings that range from circa 1695 – the John Lining House on Broad Street – to the early 1770’s, the section along Tradd from Meeting Street east to East Bay Street has dozens that have stood since Mozart was growing up in Salzburg. Why so many that are so old? For one, they were very well built, many featuring heart pine and cypress frames that termites can’t nick, as well as rafter “scissoring” in which beams are precisely fitted at angles through other beams to hold tight in wind. Secondly, Charlestonians after the Civil War were badly strapped financially, so the city did not experience widespread urban renewal in the Victorian age. Therefore, many homes that had survived the antebellum expansion continued to house families who were “too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash” but were rich in structural legacies for which Charleston is world-famous today.

  Charleston Market Report - November 2010