The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting

Special | 55m 30sVideo has Closed Captions

The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting in Columbia, S.C.

The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting is a tradition that brings South Carolinians together to celebrate the festive spirit of the holiday season.

12/11/2025

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

SCETV Specials is a local public television program presented by SCETV

Support for this program is provided by The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting

Special | 55m 30sVideo has Closed Captions

The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting is a tradition that brings South Carolinians together to celebrate the festive spirit of the holiday season.

12/11/2025

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

Genre

Culture

Share This Video

Embed Video
SCETV Specials
The 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting
SNaN Ep0
Fixed iFrame
Width: in pixelsHeight: in pixels
Responsive iFrame

How to Watch SCETV Specials

SCETV Specials is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.

Keep Exploring

Open in new tab

♪ Sarah Kay Wrenn> Welcome to the 59th Annual Governor's Carolighting My name is Sarah Kay Wrenn, Miss South Carolina 2025 and I have the pleasure of serving as your host for tonight's celebration.

It's an honor to kick off the holiday season with all of you on our Statehouse grounds in the heart of Columbia Now please stand and join me in welcoming the honorable Governor Henry McMaster and First Lady Peggy McMaster to the stage.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Sarah> What a beautiful night for the lighting of the State Christmas tree.

Throughout tonight's program, we will enjoy an assortment of musical performances by a wide array of talent from across the state of South Carolina Before we leave tonight, we'll count down the lighting of the tree led by Governor Henry McMaster and First Lady Peggy McMaster signaling the official start of the Christmas season in South Carolina.

Now I would like to invite Dr.

Neil Stuart of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia up to lead us in an opening prayer.

Dr.

Neil Stuart> Please pray with me.

Our God and our Father, we gather this evening to celebrate your great love for this world that moved you to send your son into a world of darkness where men were foolish and disobedient and deceived and enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, where men were full of malice and envy, and were hateful and hating one another.

And yet you, O Lord our God, because of the great kindness in your heart and your love for mankind, you sent your son down into this world to save us, not on the basis of deeds that we have done in righteousness, but according to your mercy, by the washing of regeneration, and by the renewal of the Holy Spirit.

We bless you, father, this evening for the gift of your son at Christmas.

He is the wonderful counselor who reveals the mind and the will of God to men.

He is the mighty God who lends his strength to the weary.

He is the everlasting Father who reveals the father's heart and brings us home to God.

And he is the Prince of Peace, who alone can make peace on earth, and sow good will among men.

Through this evening, our God, we ask you to look down in mercy upon this fair city and our beloved state of South Carolina.

Bless our governor, our mayor, our representatives, our judiciary, and all who bear the solemn responsibility of public service.

Protect our first responders and law enforcement officers, our firefighters, our emergency medical personnel, and the men and women of our military.

Strengthen all who serve the vulnerable in our communities.

Turn the hearts of our citizens, we pray, back to you this evening, oh Lord, that we as South Carolinians may know the joy, the hope, and the peace that came into the world at Christmas.

And we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Sarah> Thank you, Dr.

Stewart.

Now, it is my honor to introduce Governor Henry McMaster.

(applause) Gov.

Henry McMaster> Thank you, Ms.

Wrenn.

As you all probably noticed, Dr.

Stewart, he is a South Carolinian, as he just said, but he wasn't always one.

(laughing) And after he'd been at First Presbyterian Church for, I guess, just a not too long, he was preaching up a storm and I asked Peggy, I said, what is the man talking about?

"There are no mooses in the Bible", she said, "He said, Moses, Moses."

(laughing) Now when Dr.

Jackson talks, you'll be able to tell he's from right here.

(laughing) Just.

Are y'all... you got seats?

Y'all sit down.

(laughing) Yeah.

Y'all sit down too.

I'll be brief.

This is a lovely occasion.

We've done it a lot of times, and it seems like it just gets better and better.

And I can't wait to see the Christmas tree.

But it just dawned on me that something I thought I ought to say.

This is the, This is the day of artificial intelligence AI.

And sometimes it is very hard to understand how it all works.

So I, I tested it out a little bit the other day, and this is what I, what I found out and that is that I asked, where did the world begin?

Of course, everybody's probably heard it was the Big Bang.

Well, of course, that begs the question, well, what is the Big Bang?

What was that?

And the deeper I got into it, the less I understood about it.

It said the Big Bang was when matter, energy, space itself just burst from a single point.

Insanely hot, dense, and a singularity, I'd never heard that word.

What is a singularity, I asked.

It said, picture every bit of the universe, stars, galaxies, you, me, squashed into something tinier than an atom and hotter than a star's core.

Infinite density, no size, time, frozen, time frozen.

And then it observed that physics breaks apart there and equations go nuts.

And I knew that speed traveled at 187, 186 thousand miles per second.

That's hard to understand.

How big is an atom?

That's hard to understand.

One atom is one nanometer.

That begs the question, how big is a nanometer?

Does anybody here have any idea how big a nanometer is?

Well, I know, I'll tell you.

It's one billionth of a meter.

A hair on your head is 80,000 of them wide.

That's big.

So I asked the question, how?

How big would a pile of atoms have to be for us to see it with the naked eye?

And the answer was, you would have to pile up 1 trillion, trillion, trillion atoms in order to be able to see it with the naked eye.

Those numbers are beyond my imagination and my understanding.

Point two and final, most recently, the most recent star discovered, Anybody know the name?

It's J-07157334.

It is 100 thousand light years away.

A light year is every child knows travels 186 thousand miles per second.

Okay, well, how far will it go in one minute light 11 million 160 thousand miles in one minute.

How much?

How far will light travel?

This light that we're looking at with these stars and every light that we see.

How far does it travel in an hour?

6 trillion, 696 billion miles in an hour.

How about in a day?

How far will light travel in a day?

16 trillion 170 billion, 400 million miles in a day.

I cannot fathom or understand those kind of numbers.

And I bet you can't either.

But I'll tell you what I can understand.

Yeah, I can understand that, God said, let there be light, and there was light, and it went on from there.

And God so loved the world that he gave us his only son.

I can understand that.

And not only do I understand it, but I believe it, and I know that you do too.

And that is what has made all the difference.

Merry Christmas.

(applause) Sarah> Thank you governor.

Up first to kick off tonight's musical talent is Professor Jeffrey Lampkin and the award winning Francis Marion University YGB Gospel Choir, singing "More Abundantly" Then we will hear from the Carolina Children's Choir with "All On a Silent Night".

( More Abundantly ) ♪ (cheering) ♪ ♪ ♪ I come that you might have life more abundantly.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I come that ye might have life through eternity.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I did not come to condemn the world, ♪ ♪ nor shame you for your wrongs.

♪ ♪ But I've come to mend your broken heart ♪ ♪ And to give your heart a song, ♪ ♪ (song, song) ♪ ♪ I've come to give you life ♪ ♪ I've come to give you joy ♪ ♪ I've come to give you life ♪ ♪ more abundantly, more abundantly ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I come that you might have life more abundantly.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I come that ye might have life through eternity.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I did not come to condemn the world, ♪ ♪ nor shame you for your wrongs.

♪ ♪ But I've come to mend your broken heart ♪ ♪ and to give your heart a song.

♪ ♪ (song, song) ♪ ♪ I've come to give you life.