On a normal Saturday, 645 Coleman Boulevard is a covered pavilion beside one of the busiest roads in Mount Pleasant. On Saturday, December 12, it becomes the Town's 27th Annual Holiday Market & Craft Show from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission and parking are free, and commercial and mass-produced goods aren't accepted. The next evening, the same road carries the 31st Annual Christmas Light Parade.
Both days run on West Coleman's schedule. Saturday's events sit at the two ends of West Coleman, a market inland and an oyster roast at the harbor. Sunday's closures begin at 4 p.m. From then until the parade ends, the street is the event, and the Ravenel Bridge off-ramp onto Coleman is shut. Knowing the order of the weekend matters more than knowing the events.
Saturday sits at both ends of the road
The Holiday Market is the inland end. The Town's call for vendors asked for local food vendors, artists and craftspeople selling produce, preserves, baked goods, hot food and handmade items, and it left out commercial and mass-produced goods. The Experience Mount Pleasant listing adds live entertainment, balloon art, caricatures and Santa to the day. With commercial and mass-produced goods excluded, the tables lean toward food, produce and handmade gifts from local sellers.
The harbor end starts two hours before the market closes. Oysters On The Point runs from 2 to 6 p.m. that Saturday at Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina, 20 Patriots Point Road. The listing promises steamed local oysters, live music from Sol Driven Train and views across Charleston Harbor. Tickets are $15 online and $18 at the door, children 12 and under get in free, and sales run through CityPaperTickets.com.
The market runs 11 to 4 and the oyster roast 2 to 6, so the two-hour overlap is the window for doing both. Market first, then down Coleman to Patriots Point Road by mid-afternoon, is the order the clock suggests. On Saturday, Coleman is still an open road connecting the two. That changes the next day.
Sunday, the road is the event
The parade starts at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 13. It leaves from Live Oak Drive, heads down Coleman Boulevard and finishes at Patriots Point Road. The official parade listing describes marching bands, a Mount Pleasant Police motorcycle show, "hundreds of glowing floats decked out with tens of thousands of twinkling lights," and Santa riding a Mount Pleasant firetruck.
The road starts closing well before the first float moves. The listing gives this schedule:
- 4:00 p.m. Whilden Street to Pherigo Street closes for the parade lineup.
- 5:00 p.m. Whilden Street to Patriots Point Road closes.
- 5:00 p.m. The Ravenel Bridge off-ramp onto Coleman Boulevard closes, and all traffic goes to Highway 17.
- 5:00 p.m. Patriots Point Road from Coleman Boulevard to Harry Hallman Boulevard closes, and Patriots Point, hotel and golf course traffic goes to Harry Hallman.
So Coleman closes in two steps. The lineup zone closes first, an hour ahead, and the rest of the route follows at 5. Floats, bands and the motorcycle unit fill the blocks between Whilden and Pherigo during that hour. Spectators claiming a curb near the start are effectively working on the 4 p.m. schedule, not the 5:30 one.
For updates in the days before, the Town points to the parade's Facebook event page. In a past parade notice, the Town said the parade goes on in rain unless safety requires stopping it, and that a canceled parade cannot be rescheduled. That makes the Facebook page the place to check the afternoon of the 13th.
The off-ramp closure reaches well past the route
Of the four closures, the Ravenel Bridge off-ramp affects the most people who never plan to watch the parade. After 5 p.m., anyone driving back from the peninsula who would normally exit onto Coleman is sent to Highway 17 instead. For households in the Old Village or off Pitt Street, a routine trip home from downtown takes a different route that night.
The Patriots Point Road closure connects the two days. The road that leads to Saturday's oyster roast is closed between Coleman and Harry Hallman Boulevard on Sunday evening, and all traffic for Patriots Point, the hotel and the golf course goes to Harry Hallman. The parade ends where Saturday's harbor afternoon was, and for those few hours the harbor end of the strip is only reachable from the back.
One more request from the Town is aimed at a certain kind of spectator. Drone pilots are asked not to fly over or along the parade route. The listing points to the FAA's drone guidance and notes that the FAA requires a Part 107 waiver for flying at night or over people.
The parade itself has filled. The listing says 2026 entries are on a waitlist, and groups that still want in can email [email protected] for an application link.
Three new stops near the route since last December
The weekend's route passes close to businesses that weren't open for last year's parade. Two are on Coleman and one is on Shem Creek. Explore Charleston's fall roundup lists three new arrivals in this part of town. Each one fits a different part of the weekend.
Nantucket's Meat and Fish Market, 616 Coleman Boulevard. It opened in July 2026. It's a family business founded by Sean Ready and his father, John, run as an old-world butcher shop with New England influence. The counter carries steaks including Wagyu and Kobe, poultry, and seafood and shellfish from local waters, New England and Canada. The shop also sells grocery staples, prepared sides and brick-oven pizza, and takes special orders. Its address puts it on the same stretch of Coleman as the Pavilion at 645. That makes it an easy stop on market Saturday for the special-order shopping December brings, or for a pizza on the way home.
Framebridge, 280 West Coleman Boulevard. It opened in June 2026, and it's the company's first store in South Carolina. In a month built around gifts, a framing shop on West Coleman fills a gap the corridor had last year.
Shem Creek Outpost, 1411 Shrimp Boat Lane. It opened in July 2026 in a restored building from 1945. It's locally owned and part bait-and-tackle shop, part gift shop, with apparel, quick food, beer, ice cream and Shem Creek merchandise alongside local brands and art. It also offers dockside pickup. Explore Charleston's October write-up listed breakfast and a craft sandwich café as coming soon. For a stocking stuffer with Shem Creek's name on it, this is the shop on the creek built for that.
Getting between these stops is easier than it was before November 2025. That month the Town opened marked bike lanes, four to five feet wide, across the Shem Creek Bridge between Pelzer Drive and Mill Street. They connect to 1.5 miles of Coleman bike lanes running from Houston Northcutt Boulevard to Pherigo Street. On Saturday, a ride from the market to the creek uses the same pavement the parade will use the next night.
Two earlier dates up the road
The Coleman weekend is the main event of the season, but two dates in north Mount Pleasant come first, the weekend right after this post goes up.
- Lights Up, Saturday, November 21, 6 to 8 p.m., Mount Pleasant Towne Centre. The tree lighting and laser show start at 7:30 p.m. in front of Belk. The evening also includes live music, Santa, seasonal treats and children's activities.
- Merry Makers Market, Sunday, November 22, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Park West Recreation Complex. It's a new market and separate from the Town's December show, but it follows the same rule of local vendors only, with no commercial or mass-produced goods.
Between them, the two markets give South Mount Pleasant households two chances to shop local vendors for gifts. Park West comes first, three weeks before the Pavilion, and 645 Coleman closes out the season the day before the parade.
At St. Germain Properties, Oliver and Yolanda Caminos keep track of the same corridor year round, and we're glad to share what we know about this stretch of South Mount Pleasant. Request a Private Consultation.
