Christmas Stories to Share While Spending the Holidays Along the Grand Strand

For me, being in Myrtle Beach IS being home for Christmas.  For those of you spending the holidays along the Grand Strand, here are some local, early 20^th century, Christmas stories behind some of the festive places you may be visiting. 

In the heart of Myrtle Beach’s new historic district, which is also known as the Arts and Innovation District, lies Nance Plaza.  Each year, volunteers decorate the fencing with garland and bows making for a picturesque location for family photos near the plaza’s fountain.  And just steps away is the Grand Strand Brewing Company that features outdoor lawn games (if the weather is balmy) for the whole family, not to mention a delicious menu and great craft beer for Mom and Dad. 

You’ll see a bronze plaque nearby honoring the couple for whom the plaza is named.  So to speak, they both built Myrtle Beach—Mr. Nance had one of the first construction companies here—and they populated it--  they had ten children who along with their descendants became Myrtle Beach’s government, business, and civic leaders. 

Mrs. Nance was interviewed by the local paper back in 1965, and she described what Christmas was like in Myrtle Beach circa 1900, when she was a girl.  Remarkably, she said that nearly every year they had a white Christmas.  Back then, multiple big snowfalls annually was the norm. 

The menu for the holidays centered around what they could grow on their farm located relatively near Kings Highway about where 13^th Avenue South is now.  Her father raised hogs thereby providing the various entrees.  Side dishes included rice, sweet potatoes, and homemade biscuits.  Homegrown sugar cane allowed for cakes, cookies, and candies to be made. 

A luxury that had to be purchased during the winter was fresh fruit.  She recalls her father buying apples by the barrel and oranges by the case, and on occasion, bananas.

There were few places to shop prior to the opening of Chapin Company in 1928.  There was the Burroughs and Collins Commissary Store in the village of Myrtle Beach located near the train platform that was replaced in 1937 by the depot that we know today that was restored in 2004.  In Socastee, there were two general stores, Clardy’s and Stalvey’s.

Their inventory of Christmas decorations was slim at best.  Mrs. Nance said that they would mostly decorate with holly and cedar gathered from around their farm.  She remembers having a tree at their house, also harvested from the surrounding woods, to bring the joy of Christmas into their modest home. 

Further south along the Grand Strand, anything but modest homes were also decked out in natural greenery.  Yaupon holly, smilax and evergreens of cedar and pine were used for their innate beauty and fresh smells.  The homeowners could certainly have afforded any number of store-bought decorations, and I’d venture to guess there were a fair amount of them on display too, but they also enjoyed the decor nature provided all around them. 

Those houses were usually found on former rice plantations that fell into disrepair after the Civil War and Reconstruction.  By the early 20^th century, wealthy Northerners bought up many of those homes and properties and invested in bringing them back to their former glory.

Those homes are either no longer here or not open to the public.  But if you would like to see a gorgeous home from that era while visiting the area, make a trip to Hobcaw Barony.  The original house was lost to a fire, but the present structure is worth the visit and brims with national history (both FDR and Winston Churchill were guests there).  Their introductory tour includes the main house.  It may not be decorated in the fashion that the former owners, The Baruchs, would have had it, but currently it is bedecked in holiday finery collected from the grounds and displayed by the Garden Club of nearby Georgetown. 

I was there recently for a special program of Christmas traditions led by the legendary Lee Brockington.  She came to Hobcaw in 1984, within a year of it opening to the public.  She made her mark conveying its history in a way only Lee can.  She left her permanent post there in 2020, but continues to create marvelous historical ventures for locals and visitors to enjoy. 

At the end of the program, she distributed the lyrics to a song to which we all knew the tune.  It’s referred to as  “Gullah Jingle Bells.”  The Gullah language was developed by the enslaved Africans who were brought to these shores and had to meld different African languages with the English, French, along with other European tongues, and the Indigenous American lexicons that met them here. 

I asked Lee for permission to share the song.  She agreed if I would tell the backstory of how she came to possess it.  I delightedly accepted her caveat because I find it fascinating. 

In the words Lee shared with me, “’Row de Bote,’ a Gullah version of ‘Jingle Bells,’ is preserved for our enjoyment thanks to a serendipitous find by Lee Brockington when she was babysitting for the Mood family in Columbia, S.C.  Taped to the refrigerator [presumably by the family matriarch] were the song’s handwritten words with a notation that read ‘Jingle Bells in Gullah --  have the children memorize this.’ Ever the historian, Lee made a word-for-word copy and has taught the song to generations of school children, not to mention scores of adults, since 1980.  ‘Could it be,’ muses Lee, ‘that it was so simply put down on paper by Julia Mood Peterkin, the state’s only Pulitzer Prize winning author?”

On my Thursday tours to Murrells Inlet, I take my guests past Sunnyside, a beautiful, private, event venue that you can’t even see from the road because of the trees.  It was where the author, Julia Mood Peterkin, lived part time (their primary home was in Columbia) when she was inspired to write her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Scarlet Sister Mary.  It and her other novels are set at what she calls Blue Brook Plantation.  In reality, it was Brookgreen Plantation, now part of Brookgreen Gardens, that she and her husband owned in the early 1920s.  The stories take place after the Civil War and give unprecedented insight into what life for African Americans was like in this region during Reconstruction.  W.E.B. Du Bois once said of Peterkin that she “is a Southern white woman, but she has the eye and ear to see beauty and know truth.”

So can you imagine how I FLIPPED OUT when I learned that Lee Brockington was the Mood Family BABYSITTER some sixty years later!  Julia’s daughter-in-law was an acquaintance of mine.  In fact, she was related to me by marriage and I still cherish the candle holders that she and her sister gave us as a wedding gift.  It is an honor to share with you this song that has been preserved in part by the women of the Mood and Brockington families.  Please share it with the little ones in your life.

ROW DE BOTE

(Sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)

CHORUS

Row de bote

Row de bote

Row um up de bay

Hurry, Sandy*, do’ be late

Tuhmorra Christmas day.

 

Rowin’ tru de maash

‘een e leaky ole batto

Yukkum Sandy up de crick

Wif de gif’ fuh me an’ moe.

 

Oh de watuh e am ruff

An’ de bote e fillin’ up

But Sandy keep him berry dry

Wid duh good ole bailin’ cup

(CHORUS)

 

Oh de icetyuh rock** dem shaap

An’ de ebb tide guinin’ out

So Sandy stay fum de bank

An’ don’ git turned about.

 

Wen de nite him berry daak

Keep yuh eye peel fuh de ghos’

An’ de plat-eye*** by den ben’

Way dey daak e stay de mos’.

(CHORUS)

 

So Sandy row de bote

Mek dem ooh blade**** spin

An’ we git up fo’ day lite clean*****

Tuh see if yuh cum in.

(CHORUS)

 

*Santa

**oyster shells

***A plat-eye is a shape-shifting spirit from the Gullah tradition that rises like a mist and takes the form of humans or animals to lure its victims into the woods to their peril.

****oar

*****sunrise