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The Lowcountry’s tradition of helping its neighbors continues this Christmas, ensuring everyone can enjoy a home-cooked holiday meal.

For those who may not have family nearby, plans for Christmas Day or simply want to share the holiday with others, two Beaufort area eateries will offer free community meals to celebrate the holiday.

Here’s where folks can find free, community Christmas meals this year:

A Christmas Community Lunch at Sea Eagle Market

A Christmas Community Lunch offering connection and comfort will take place at Sea Eagle Market.

The lunch will be held on Christmas Day from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at 2149 Boundary Street.

All are welcome, and the event is designed to ensure that no one has to spend Christmas alone.

Sea Eagle Market says guests can expect a warm meal, friendly conversation and good company.

Orphans & Strays Christmas Dinner with Hemingway’s Bistro & Panini’s

This beloved, decades-old tradition continues on Christmas Day, starting at 2:00 p.m. at Hemingway’s Bistro on the Beaufort waterfront.

Hosted by Hemingway’s Bistro and Panini’s on the Waterfront, this annual free Community Christmas Dinner invites anyone to attend the potluck-style meal, where those who wish are encouraged to bring a side dish to share, though it is not required.

Hemingway’s and Panini’s donate their time to prepare the main entrées along with additional sides.

The meal is free and open to everyone, including locals and visitors who might otherwise have few options for spending the holiday.

Hemingway’s Bistro is located at 920 Bay Street in downtown Beaufort’s Waterfront Park, with Panini’s next door at 926 Bay Street.

If we missed a spot, please email amiller@islandpacket.com to have it added to the list:

Ready to ring in 2026?

Residents and holiday visitors across the Lowcountry will have several chances to celebrate the New Year with events, ball drops, dinners and waterfront fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

From Hilton Head Island to downtown Beaufort, communities are offering family-friendly events to welcome the year ahead.

Here’s a running list of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day festivities taking place across Beaufort County:

Hilton Head Island

One of the area’s most popular New Year’s Eve celebrations, Harbour Town’s New Year’s Eve Ball Drop.

Taking place at 149 Lighthouse Road, this event features entertainment, food and music. To celebrate the start of 2026, an illuminated ball will drop twice — once at 7 p.m. for families with younger children and again at midnight to welcome the New Year. The $9 Sea Pines gate fee is needed for entry.

In addition to the onshore festivities, guests can celebrate from the water aboard the New Year’s Eve Dinner Cruise with Vagabond Cruise. The cruise runs from 5 to 7 p.m. and departs from the Harbour Town Yacht Basin. Dinner is included and reservations are required. Tickets are $109 for adults and $70 for children aged 3 to 12.

Beaufort

For those in search of fireworks, in Beaufort, the New Year will be welcomed with a fireworks display over the Beaufort River at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park.

Set against the backdrop of Beaufort’s historic waterfront, the display is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m., lighting up the sky with colorful bursts over the river.

Attendees are encouraged to bring chairs and arrive early to secure a good viewing spot along the waterfront. This event is free and open to the public.

Restaurants to visit for New Year’s Eve

Below is a list of restaurants serving prix fixe meals or hosting New Year’s Eve celebrations. Click on each restaurant to be directed to the webpage.

If we missed a spot, please email amiller@islandpacket.com to have it added:

Hilton Head

Bluffton

Beaufort & Port Royal

New Year’s Day events

Hilton Head Island will host its annual Polar Plunge at Coligny Beach on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026.

Held at 1 Coligny Circle, the event begins at 9:30 a.m. with activities and t-shirts. The plunge into the ocean is at 11 a.m. This event is free.

The 16th annual Pelican Plunge will take place on New Year’s Day at Hunting Island State Park, located at 2555 Sea Island Parkway.

Festivities begin with a costume parade at 12:30 p.m., followed by the official plunge into the ocean at 1 p.m. The event features prizes, food trucks and commemorative T-shirts for participants.

Tickets are required to take part in the plunge. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children.

Federal regulators cited Beaufort Memorial Hospital for multiple policy violations that led to a woman giving birth unassisted in the campus’ parking lot in March.

A Statement of Deficiencies submitted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services details noncompliance with 1986’s Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospital staffers to evaluate and treat anyone who arrives with an emergency medical condition.

The report chided the hospital for incomplete EMTALA training that did not include definitions, policy requirements and on-call physician guidelines. It was BMH’s first violation of this type since 2010, according to federal records.

The report says the hospital lacked a staffer in a critical triage position when the woman’s partner rushed into the emergency room around 7:30 a.m. March 11 as she waited in the car. Her partner told staffers her water had broken as they turned into the hospital and she “felt the baby’s head coming out.”

Emergency room personnel told the man to drive to the nearby Birthing Center, according to the report, but no one from the department came to talk to the woman “to evaluate the situation” and determine if the trip was safe for her to make.

Construction on the hospital campus and closures on certain portions of roadways left the couple struggling to find the Birthing Center, the report says. The woman’s partner went into the Surgical Center for help. The woman “delivered a baby boy in the car alone” and without the assistance of staff, the report said. Staffers arrived to find the newborn on her chest.

Surveillance footage from that morning showed a red, “Jeep-like” vehicle pulling up to the ER and rushing inside. In the passenger seat was a woman in “birthing position,” with her feet resting on the dashboard.

The patient care technician on duty at the time later told interviewers there had been no triage registered nurse assigned to the ER lobby, which violates the staffing protocol’s requirement to have always someone in that position on duty. Because the direct route to the Birthing Center was “walled off” by construction, the technician said he told the woman’s partner that it would be faster for him to drive her over.

“I should never have done that,” the technician said in an interview, referring to sending the couple by car to the Birthing Center without going outside to assess the situation. When the man came in asking for help, the technician did not call back to the department’s charge nurse, which is protocol when a triage nurse is not present.

A department manager told interviewers “there was no excuse” for the oversight and that the patient should have been assisted into the ER for examination. The manager confirmed their policy requires patients in all childbirth cases to be transported by hospital staff to the Birthing Center.

Regulators found not all hospital staff had received the same EMTALA training. The report ends with observations of gaps in the hospital’s childbirth policies, such as a lack of a “defined obstetric triage process” based on national standards.

Federal officials approved a plan submitted by Beaufort Memorial to amend the violations detailed in the report, according to reporting from The Post and Courier. The hospital instituted new online training that is required for all staff members and pledged to have a nurse stationed at the emergency room’s reception desk at all times.

Asked to comment on the federal report, a spokesperson for the hospital sent a statement from Russell Baxley, the president and CEO of Beaufort Memorial.

“We take our obligations under federal law very seriously. Patient safety and access to emergency care remain our highest priorities,” Baxley wrote in the statement. “Beaufort Memorial remains committed to those priorities and compliance with law. At this time, the matter is not closed, and no further comment will be made.”

Founded in 1944, Beaufort Memorial Hospital is chartered by the state and governed by a nine-member Board of Trustees appointed by Beaufort County Council. Its plans for expansion include new locations in Bluffton and on Hilton Head Island.

A former high-ranking Beaufort County employee violated the state’s ethics act by using his position to obtain free architectural work for a personal home renovation, the South Carolina Ethics Commission has ruled.

The Dec. 11 decision came more than a year after the commission first received a complaint about Eric Larson’s behavior and he resigned from his role with the county.

Larson, who served as the county’s Capital Improvements Project director until his resignation in June 2024, was found to have knowingly used county time and resources to have one of his subordinates draft architectural plans for a sun room addition in his home, according to the Commission’s written order obtained by The Island Packet by the complainant.

Larson’s was one of a string of high profile positions that were vacated following the aftermath of former County Administrator Eric Greenway’s exit from Beaufort County in 2023. He was also one of several former Beaufort County employees to face ethics complaints for their conduct while employed.

Larson is now Jasper County’s director of development services, County Administrator Andrew Fulghum told The Island Packet.

How Eric Larson violated SC’s ethics law

The commission determined that Larson violated the state’s ethics law by having a county employee, who reported to him directly, work on a personal project during the workday while using county equipment.

The employee, Construction Manager Mark Sutton, testified that he spent at least 20 hours of county time creating and revising the plans. He also said he felt pressured to comply with the requests of his superior, who had previously discussed promoting Sutton, according to the report. He told the commission that Larson would stand at his desk until edits to the plan were made.

He told the Commission that when Larson received the ethics complaint, he encouraged Sutton to deny he worked on the plan during county hours. Sutton retired from his county job earlier this year.

Larson argued that when he approached his employee about the work, Sutton offered to do it for $1,000, which Larson said he fully intended to pay. He testified that any workplace conversations they had about the plans would happen in between county tasks and that he did not stand over Sutton’s shoulder to make sure he did the work at the office.

The ethics act prohibits public employees from knowingly using their position to obtain an economic interest, or anything more than $50, for themselves. The commission found that Larson had done this, and that county time and resources were used to create the plan.

What happens next

The Ethics Commission issued Larson a public reprimand, or a formal statement of disapproval for the official’s ethical violation. They also ordered him to pay a $2,000 civil penalty, a $1,500 administrative fee and to reimburse Beaufort County nearly $2,000 for the value of the architectural work.

By Delayna Earley

The Island News

The City of Beaufort has enacted a ban on the release of balloons filled with helium into the air – a first for the state.

Beaufort’s City Council members passed the ordinance unanimously during their Dec. 9 meeting on its second reading and this extends an existing ordinance banning the release of balloons from city-owned property.

Jenn Clementoni, executive director of the Carolina Bight Birding Center, was a large proponent of the ordinance, said that releasing balloons is dangerous to domestic and wild animals and pollutes our water, marshes and shorelines.

She said that the balloons are not biodegradable and they do not just go away.

The ordinance was introduced in November with language modeled after the bill proposing a statewide ban, H-3047, that was introduced in January 2025 in the statehouse but has not yet made it out of the House.

City Councilman Josh Scallate said before council voted that the city’s ban will hopefully just be the first and actions have already been taken to try and encourage Beaufort County and other municipalities in the region to adopt similar ordinances.

He stated that a formal presentation about the ban is expected to be made during the Southern Lowcountry Regional Board’s Jan. 27, 2026, meeting in hopes of getting more ordinances passed to show support for a statewide ban.

Violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor offense and is punishable by a fine.

The ordinance does allow for balloons released indoors, hot air balloons that are recovered after launching and balloons released by governmental agencies intended for meteorological studies and research.

Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at .