♪ Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene.

And yes, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas all over the state as we slowly return to some sense of normalcy for the holiday season.

The season kicks off in high fashion with this year's governor's Carolighting ceremony on the steps of the South Carolina State House.

This is an extraordinary event that as Kelly, Barbrey explains, takes months of planning and teamwork, just to help get us into the holiday spirit.

>> Good evening, and welcome to the 55th Annual Governor's Carolighting.

<Trumpets blaring majestically> Kelly: So the governor's care lighting is really a statewide event.

And so it's just a wonderful opportunity for the state to get in on the Christmas spirit, and really celebrate the season with the Christmas tree lighting.

So this is the 55th year that the care lighting has happened.

Even though we've been involved for seven it has been going on for a number of years.

And it's just great to see that tradition continue year after year.

So we have talent from all around the state that participates every year in the Governor's Carolighting.

And it's a great opportunity for us to showcase just the different kinds of talent around the state.

So we have choirs we have pianists, we have the children, we have the Fort Jackson 282nd Army Band.

And it just shows how diverse and how wonderfully talented our state really is.

♪ O Holy Night!

♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining.

♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear Savior's birth!

♪ ♪ Long lay the world in sin and error pining ♪ ♪ 'Til he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.

♪ ♪ [Holiday music playing] ♪ ♪ ♪ We start planning around August or September every year for this event.

And it's a wonderful coordination between the governor's office, the all of the different vendors that helped to bring the chairs and the tables and all of the different set up equipment, the tents and the lighting and the sound.

And then it's one thing to put on an event, but it's another to put on an event for live television.

So making sure that it's timed up appropriately making sure that everything is in the shot.

And weather is a huge factor too.

You know, last year it was raining on the day of the Carolighting and so we had to move it inside.

We didn't get to have the audience it was just so different.

And this year we were so blessed to have a beautiful evening.

It was cool, but not too cold.

It felt very festive and it was just heartwarming to see all of the families come out to celebrate.

Governor McMaster: 5 4 3 2 1, Ah-ha.

♪ [Tree Lights & music begins] ♪ The Palmetto State is home to some of the nation's most spectacular historic venues.

In this previously aired segment, we're going to look back at the important role these theaters play in showcasing the arts, not only during holiday performances, but for performances all year long.

♪ (Nutcracker Suite) ♪ Newberry is very well known.

Not only on the national stage but on the international stage for what it does.

It's only 426 seats.

That's a small house compared to some of its contemporaries.

The theater was built in 1881.

Newberry at the time was 2500 people.

They decided to spend 30 thousand dollars to build a multipurpose facility.

And it is of a Victorian look.

It's very brick.

It's very heavy.

It's got that beautiful detail, but it again, it was multi-purpose in a time period where that was somewhat new.

So, downstairs when they finally open the doors in 1882 after completing it was the jail, was the fire house, was the courthouse, was the city council chambers and it was thriving and bustling.

Up stairs was the opera house.

So, after a five million dollar restoration.

It really wasn't a restoration.

It was a rehab.

Let's bring her up.

Let's bring this old woman up to really show her personality in a modern age.

We've got the lobby.

We had this space up here, which was reconfigured to be more of the original 1882 look and we started having world class events just like we had.

Our facility is small.

Our stage is small, but we get major acts.

We have Wynton Marsalis coming up from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

That's huge.

And that's because we're known on the world stage.

We have had Willie Nelson as we talked about.

We have Jane Lynch coming up from Glee.

People know about us.

We've had our own stars from the ballet guilds and from the schools.

Those are stars that are born here too.

So, this building has become more of a community center in the last 20 years, 21 years, that it really was when it opened in 1882.

Why are these performances important in historic theaters?

Because historic theaters are the repositories for memories and emotions that have happened time and time again.

There's this thread that is woven between the generations.

And that's what historic theaters do.

They provide the backdrop for an amazing tapestry of emotions, of experiences.

It's a performance.

It's going home and talking about it and having that adrenaline rush.

That's what historic theaters do.

♪ (music ending) ♪ (applause) ♪ (folk music singing) ♪ There's a lot that theater accomplishes beyond just being an entertainment for an audience.

It's the only art form that really connects the actors to the audience.

♪ (folk music) ♪ The doors of the Abbeville Opera House opened on October 10th, 1908.

And at that time, a lot of road companies were coming out of New York City.

And one of the most popular tours for the Vaudeville Circuit was from New York to Richmond, Virginia and then from Richmond on to Atlanta.

So, from the 1880s on every major road company was coming through Abbeville on the way to performing in Atlanta and the community decided, if we had a theater facility here, we could sponsor a lot of these New York shows.

So they wrote to New York to the Keith circuit, which is one of the popular Vaudeville circuits at the time.

And told them about what they were thinking about.

The Keith circuit sent them the ground plans to a theater where a lot of Vaudeville shows were produced and eight years later, the historic Abbeville Opera House opened its doors.

The Abbeville Opera House though will remind you of a lot of the Broadway theaters that you see in Manhattan to this day.

It's 75 feet to our grid.

Another 25 or 30 feet to the ceiling.

So, this wonderful 7800 square foot stage back there, when you add that together and consider that, that stage floor is on the second floor and we have a costume storage area underneath the stage floor that makes our back wall one of the largest freestanding brick walls left in the country.

The Abbeville Opera House was first restored to its original turn of the century condition way back in 1968 and it paved the way for the restoration and the revitalization of the entire Abbeville County.

About 85% of our attendance comes not just from outside Abbeville, but outside the state of South Carolina, as well.

We have tour buses from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee who come here on a regular basis to see the many different shows here that we do at the Abbeville Opera House.

♪ (folk singing) ♪ It means so much.

I mean as long as it's been here in the entertainment and the way it's affected the community and drawn people from all over the upstate counties.

We need to keep it going, the creativity, watching the play come together, watching everything form.

It's just a wonderful experience and you bond with the cast members.

It's a great time.

To sit in the audience and watch a show here, you're actually part.

The actors on the stage and the audience, the interaction between them in a theater this size is just amazing.

♪ It's really something to watch.

♪ (Christmas caroling) ♪ People have been coming to this spot for almost 300 years to have performances, musicals and chamber music.

The first theater in America was built on this site in 1736.

It's called the Dock Street Theatre.

It opened with the recruiting officer, which was the first play in America.

And then, it disappeared, probably burned down, We don't know exactly what happened to it.

They built a hotel on this site about 1800 and in the 1930s, the WPA, a federal works project took over the building and inside of the shell of the old hotel, they built a new theater called the New Dock Street Theater, which opened in 1937.

Although they made it look like a theatre, it was built in 1736.

They gutted the hotel room area, which is what we're sitting in now.

And then rebuilt a 1700 theater in it's place, 460 odd seating.

When I give a tour in here, I will seat my visitors behind me here in the balcony.

And I'll stand in box O, which is up right here on the stage.

But I can actually speak in a normal voice, in that box and they can hear every word I say, which is a very great tribute to the men and women who designed this building.

Clean up or move out.

We've been performing here for over 40 years.

Actually, the very first production was a production of A Christmas Carol, back in 1978.

We produced that show about every other year.

In fact, this year's our 21st Christmas Carol, as well.

We get to tell many of the stories of our own community in our own state.

We've had original plays like the Seat of Justice, which is about the Briggs versus Elliot case.

We did a play called Gershwin at Folly, which is about Gershwin writing Porgy and Bess.

So, we try not only to bring plays from New York and around the country, but to tell our own stories as well.

We have many homes in Charleston that people walk through, You know, you go through as a tourists.

These beautiful homes, in effect, they're museums.

This is not a museum.

This is a live building.

The men and women in here that are part of it, be it the men and women on the stage, all the people in the audience.

It's an interactive piece.

To see it here live with human beings on the stage, there's a magnetism.

There's dynamics, you can feel it when you walk out the door.

(applause) Beryl Dakers: Nothing gets us in the Christmas spirit more than holiday lights.

South Carolina is home to some of the most amazing displays of the season, designed to illuminate the hearts and souls of kids, both young and old alike.

Let's take a look.

♪ (instrumental music) ♪ ♪ (Deck the Halls) ♪ The show started in 2002.

And it's a two mile loop.

It's over a million sparkling lights and we enjoy putting it on every year.

It's our favorite holiday event to share with the community.

We've got a two mile trail through our park where you drive through and you see lots of pretty lights.

They're animated.

There are different themed areas.

There's Santa flying over house tops and you can walk this really magical wetland walking trail, where there's a laser show.

It takes you down to the wetland where there's a dancing forest, synchronized to music and you can walk that trail and be outside but you're still in a very safe way.

Take a leisurely drive through the lights.

Take a walk on the trail and come out enjoy it.

♪ (drum music) ♪ This is our fifth year of doing the light show.

It's a drive through.

A lot of people think it's just a drive through but there is 30 minutes worth of music and lights.

We have thirteen different songs.

They're all synchronized to the music and the lights are synchronized together.

You can drive around the track as many times as you like.

Then you can go park on our back stretch area where you can actually see all the lights and hear the music.

You can actually drive through and feed the animals.

We have chutes where you can sit the food down and you never have to leave your car or you are welcome to get out and go see the animals.

♪ ♪ We are proud to present our 33rd year of lights before Christmas.

We have nearly a million lights throughout the zoo side of the park.

Several ornate images that folks always enjoy.

Of course, you're going to see some traditional lights favorites.

So one of the newest features that we have at Lights before Christmas is the 30 foot animated story tree that you see right when you enter the park, so, this huge tree in the middle of our main plaza.

You can hear some favorite animal sounds.

The tree lights up with different animal images and then it goes into an animated story.

So, whether you're a family or you're here with your friends, there's always something to enjoy, adults and children alike.

♪ Every December, Brookgreen hosts Nights of a Thousand Candles.

This is our 21st year.

And it has grown to be one of the most wonderful candle and lighting displays in the southeast.

We literally have thousands of candles and millions of lights throughout the gardens.

Each of the different garden rooms here have a different theme.

So, every time you're walking around the corner, you're seeing something new.

Nights of a thousand candles has really become the largest event here at Brookgreen Gardens.

It takes a large portion of the year to design it, create it, and put it all together.

It takes about seven, eight months of my life, you know, working virtually all year into the summer and we start the lighting installation in the garden right after Labor Day and it's ready right about at Thanksgiving.

Oak Allee is one of the iconic places.

It's hundreds of thousands of lights draping down from 250 year old oak trees.

It's one of the places that we see so many proposals every year.

It's the romantic spot.

The children's garden is really beautiful.

It's got instead of just the white lights, it's got multi colored lights.

We also have a snow machine in there and the sculptures that are in the children's garden are geared towards children.

So it's really a fun place for kids to go and have a little fun and play in different colors.

So, it's a wonderful place.

Everyone in South Carolina, if you haven't been lately, you haven't been.

You need to come back and visit Brookgreen Gardens.

Beryl Dakers: As we gather around to celebrate Christmas night, we can't help but marvel at the one person for whom it's the biggest work night of the year.

You guessed it.

I'm talking about Santa Claus.

If you've ever wondered what St. Nick does the other 364 days a year.

Well, we have the answer for you.

We caught up with the jolliest of them all, at a very unlikely spot the beach (sleigh bells) ♪ (Christmas music) ♪ When I got done doing my one day's work out of the year, I wanted to take the reindeer on vacations so threw the dart and I hit the Isles of Palms.

If you look out tonight, you'll see some of my reindeer in the marshes and swamps playing.

I am Beach Santa.

For someone to get on a naughty list they got to do do bad things.

And my list of bad things would be leaving stuff or littering on the beach or wherever you're at.

That gets you on the naughty list real fast.

And it's amazing to see how many people are on the naughty list.

In the summer time what I do is I come down here and do environmental cleanups, whether be at the beach or in the tri-county area.

When I enter the data, it's referred to as a sweep or an observation, my first sweep was August 16th, 2018 was my number one sweep.

January 1st this year was my 315th sweep.

And today is my 693rd or 4th sweep.

I've 380 sweeps, clean ups, this year.

Getting that litter out of the environment is so important.

♪ Beach Santa is, he's a presence on the beach that automatically draws people to him.

You can tell.

He must be Santa.

He is locally, world famous.

He is constantly preaching to people about the importance of keeping our beaches clean.

Beach Santa is an amazing steward for our planet.

The work that Beach Santa has done is really been inspiring and and that's really important because he cannot solve this problem by himself.

Santa needs helpers.

He is particularly concerned about the cigarette butts on the beach.

What a whole lot of people don't understand is how toxic that cigarette butts are.

And it's largely because of his emphasis on that particular thing and the data that he has contributed towards giving the Isle of Palms City Council, a complete picture of how bad it was, that they passed a smoking ban on the beach.

The aquarium has partnered with hundreds of local groups.

And they'll go to gather together for an hour or so and pick up trash.

And the aquarium actually created something called the little free digital journal, which is a litter tracker.

The purpose of it is to have an online resource for people to actually document what the litter is and what they're picking up.

You can't come up with solutions that make sense if you don't know what the litter is.

And so, that's the mission behind this, is to get the information to foster policy solutions to some of the issues that different communities have.

He's just a one man machine.

He goes out every single day collecting data.

At this point, he has picked up over 300 thousand pieces of debris.

And in the litter free digital journal we have over a million litter items documented that over fourteen hundred members have picked up.

He alone has picked up basically a third of that.

And so he's just a powerhouse.

What this journal does is to invite people to be citizen scientists.

There is an app that actually is part of the citizen science app that the South Carolina aquarium has designed.

With the app, if you're just out and about and you're finding a few pieces of trash to pick up to discard, you can track them in that app.

And when you can see how much you've actually done, not only do you know that you're now being a citizen scientist and you're helping decision makers, but you see how much work you've actually done.

And it's very rewarding in itself to do that.

♪ To get on the nice list you've got to be responsible, not leave anything or abandon anything on the beach or anywhere you're at and by helping out.

If you set up on the beach some place and you see something that doesn't belong there, pick it up and throw it away.

If everybody picked up two or three items that they found on the beach, it would make it, so when they came down here to do a weekly sweep or daily sweep in the busy season, I would find nothing on the beach of litter.

That's a lot of people on the nice list.

♪ The Christmas spirit is about the joy of life, the joy of giving, the joy of sharing.

It's a joy about being a good person and doing the right thing.

I know that if you look for the good in somebody, you'll find it.

And what the country's been through lately, all the ups and downs, I've come to realize that no matter what side of the aisle you're on, no matter who you voted for, if you're a good person, that's all that matters, is being a good person and doing the right thing.

We need more happiness in the world.

We need more positives in the world.

My message for the people of South Carolina is be responsible.

Let's make the entire South Carolina beautiful.

We need to do things now to protect the future.

The one thing that people need to do, is take everything with them.

Take their memories.

And they want to leave one thing on the beach, footprints.

Beryl Dakers: Yes, tis the season.

And for more holiday stories about our state and more details on the stories you've just seen, do visit our web site at Palmetto Scene.org.

And of course, don't forget to follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at SCETV# Palmetto Scene.

For all of us here at Palmetto Scene.

I'm Beryl Dakers.

Wishing you the very happiest of holidays.

♪