Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights

The Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights is a great activity for the whole family! Make sure you don't miss this if you live in the Lowcountry!

Every year for our dating anniversary, we try to recreate our first date.

On our first real date, we went to Taco Boy on Folly Beach and then to the Holiday Festival of Lights at the James Island County Park.

It was a great evening where I didn't screw up too much. Whatever I did, it worked to get me a second date and a wife.

You can read our page on all of the Charleston County Parks here!

The Holiday Festival of Lights gets bigger and better each year and we now take our children each year. It has become a wonderful tradition and one you don't want to miss if you live in the Lowcountry.

Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights

There are really two great ways to enjoy the lights.

The first is to drive slowly around the loop in your car and listen to Christmas music while looking at the big lights. The second is to park your car and get out to walk around the Christmas village and all the activities they have in store.

Driving Christmas lights

When you're driving around the Holiday Festival of Lights, you do a long loop around the entire park.

As you're driving, they have lights broken up into different categories and you'll be amazed at how many there actually are.

Expect to see groupings like toys, dinosaurs, Noah's Ark, Charleston local and much much more.

It's important while driving to make sure you go nice and slow and enjoy the lights. It's ok if you're crawling because traffic is going to move slow.

After you get to the end, there's a lane to leave the park and a lane to reenter and do the loop again. We always do one full loop first, then reenter the park and drive halfway again to the parking lots where we get out.

Santa's village at the Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights

Once you've done a lap or two, park the car and go for a walk through the trails and check out the cute woods displays.

You'll see lights on all the trails between the different sections of the park.

In the middle of everything is where you can do s'mores, talk to Santa, climb the rock wall and check out the murals painted and crafted by each school in the Charleston County School District.

This is one of the coolest things about the Holiday Festival of Lights because you get to see the creativity of different kids at different schools of different ages.

There's also a great gift shop where you can buy lots of Christmas nick-knacks, including the new ornament representing one of the light displays from that year. We bought our first one this year because it was of one of our favorite light displays. Silly fat Santa...

The Holiday Festival of Lights is one of our favorite places to go each year and we hope you enjoy it too!