Grand Strand holidays

For the holidays, the main allure of Myrtle Beach shifts inland – for shows.

The Carolina Opry (www.thecarolinaopry.com) fields its “Christmas Special” with the cast doing a variety of holiday tunes, choreographed holiday production numbers. The show, now in its 30th season, runs Nov. 2 through Jan. 2. with performances at 1 or 7 p.m. most days (check the online schedule).

The large venue is on the north side of Myrtle Beach, on U.S. 17 near U.S. 17 Business.

Alabama Theatre (www.alabama-theatre.com) – nearby, at Barefoot Landing – has its own song/dance extravaganza, “The South’s Grandest Christmas Show,” Nov. 2-Jan. 2 Mondays-Saturdays at 2 and/or 7 p.m.. Dec. 6 (a Sunday) the venue offers “An Elvis Christmas” with tribute performer Eddie Miles.

The Palace Theatre, at Broadway at the Beach (www.palacetheatremyrtlebeach.com), debuts – “Christmas Wonderland” – offered Tuesdays-Saturdays, Nov. 3 through Dec. 19, with holiday classics, a chorus line and a pair of skaters. The traditional show is being brought in from London’s West End (Britain’s Broadway).

The productions are for all-age audiences; tickets start around $35 ($29 for the two weekly matinees); reservations are suggested.

Also at Broadway at the Beach, Legends in Concert (www.legendsinconcert.com) tweaks its tribute-artist shows Nov. 2 through Jan. 2, with an Elvis, Nat “King” Cole, the Blues Brothers, Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton doing seasonal tunes. Tickets start around $39.

You can blend shopping and entertainment at the Dickens Christmas Show & Festivals (www.dickenschristmasshow.com) Nov. 12-15 at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, downtown on North Oak Street. The centerpiece is the Victorian Holiday Marketplace, which requires all 350 or so vendors to dress in 19th-century garb. If you’ve ever seen a film or TV adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” you get the picture.

You’ll get an approximation of Dickensian London. The marketplace is dressed as well, its walls decorated with 3-D row houses, churches and shops; the back wall is covered with a 210-foot panorama emulating a snow-covered, circa-1880 London street scene. Vendor aisles are done as “streets” decked with Victorian-style benches and lamp posts. In the middle of all this is a huge Christmas tree decorated for that era.

Also there: strolling musicians, Punch and Judy shows, a Victorian tea-leaf reader, “street urchins” and St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus in America and, in traditional British lore, as Father Christmas), who will greet shoppers who stop by his Victorian castle.

Merchandise includes a range of gift items: holiday decor and foodstuffs, jewelry, apparel, home furnishings, soaps, arts and crafts. Admission: $9.50.

Area information: www.visitmyrtlebeach.com.

John Bordsen

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 12:03 PM with the headline "Grand Strand holidays."