Southern Pines Has Two Christmas Parades a Week Apart. Only One Has Horses.
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
When someone in Southern Pines says "the Christmas parade," which one do they mean? The Southern Pines Business Association parade is Saturday morning, December 5, with marching bands and Santa. One week later, Saturday afternoon, December 12, the Moore County Driving Club brings decorated horses and carriages up the same street. Both use Broad Street and both are free to watch. Each one is run by a different group on its own schedule.
The difference matters for more than which Saturday you block off. The carriage parade is the one part of a working driving club's season that comes downtown. Main Street keeps one schedule and horse country keeps another, and for a few Saturdays they share Broad Street.
The Business Association's parade starts at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 5, 2026. The SPBA's parade page lists high school marching bands, dance teams, floats built by local organizations and Moore County businesses, fire trucks, antique cars, Misses and Princesses, community and political representatives, and Santa Claus.
The route is the useful part. The parade forms at the Sunrise Theater and heads south on Broad Street to Massachusetts Avenue. There it crosses the tracks and comes back north along Broad Street, ending at Connecticut Avenue. Because the parade travels down one side of the tracks and back up the other, a spot on either side of Broad gets the full lineup. The stretch near the Massachusetts Avenue crossing is where it turns around.
The application to enter a float is a downloadable form you mail in, and the Association takes sponsorship questions by email at [email protected]. Any business or community group that wants to be in the parade rather than watch it should start there.
The Christmas Carriage Parade keeps a different schedule, and it starts well before anything reaches Broad Street. The Moore County Driving Club's 2026 calendar lays out the day:
The club's own description is short:
"The Annual Christmas Carriage parade through historic Southern Pines."
The Pines Times lists the 2026 parade for 1:00 to 1:30 p.m. on December 12. It describes horses and carriages decorated for the holidays and says spectators can line up anywhere along Broad Street. Thirty minutes is a short window. On the 5th you can show up at 11 and still catch the floats as they come back north. On the 12th, plan to be on the curb before 1.
The parade has a long run. The Pilot covered the club's 33rd annual Christmas Carriage Parade, reporting that the rain let up in time and hundreds lined Broad Street to watch the horses and decorated carriages. That puts the tradition well past three decades.
The Moore County Driving Club describes itself as based in Southern Pines and says its events are open to every level of driving. Its 2026 calendar shows that December 12 comes near the end of a busy stretch:
So the turnout you see on Broad Street has spent the fall competing and driving. Horse country keeps a full calendar of its own in October and November, as our look at Carolina Horse Park's fall calendar laid out. The carriage parade is the one day that calendar comes through the center of town in front of everyone.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is the closest the two schedules come to each other. The driving club's Safari Drive runs at Big Sky from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Later that afternoon, the Town of Southern Pines Christmas tree lighting runs from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on the First Bank Stage and Sunrise Theater green space, according to The Pines Times. Santa arrives at 4:30, photos run until 6:00, and the tree is lit at 6:15.
The tree lighting happens in front of the Sunrise Theater, the same spot where the Business Association parade forms one week later. In practice, November 28 opens the downtown season and December 12 closes it, with the same block of Broad Street in use on three Saturdays in a row.
This post goes up on a Thursday, so the season's first event is tomorrow night.
Counting the Veterans Parade, Broad Street hosts three parades between November 7 and December 12.
A few things have changed downtown since last December. The Paper Trail is a stationery shop in The Belvedere at 110 W. Pennsylvania Ave. The Pilot reported it fully stocked and open, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It is a short walk from Broad Street and open on both parade Saturdays, which makes it an easy place to pick up cards and wrapping.
Rec Room Bar & Arcade at 750 SW Broad St. is building a kitchen for hand-tossed pizza and wings. The Pilot reported it could open as early as November, with no firm date set. If it opens on that schedule, there will be a new place to eat on Broad Street by the parade weekends.
Away from downtown, Los Jefes opened in late September at 100 Pavilion Way in The Pavilion at Morganton Park, in the space that used to be Vaquera, according to The Pilot and the Sandhills Sentinel. The two outlets list different Sunday closing times, so call ahead before a late dinner. For more on what opened downtown earlier this year, see our summer field guide to downtown Southern Pines. For a quieter December morning, Weymouth Woods has six trails, as we covered in our Weymouth Woods guide.
Brittany grew up in Moore County and works with equestrian and acreage buyers across the Sandhills. If the carriages on December 12 have you thinking about a place with room for a barn of your own, start with B. Paschal Co. and our horse farm listings, then ask Brittany about her private listings.
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