Travel + Leisure recently created a list of the “Best Places for Holiday Travel,” and Charleston was one of only four US cities on the list.

Here’s what T+L said about Charleston during the holidays:

December is the only month when our hometown, which tends toward the tastefully manicured, allows itself to be adorably cheesy. Santa lands in Marion Square to light up a 60-foot-tall tree (Dec.4), and lampposts are dressed up in ribbons and wreaths. There’s a charmingly motley holiday parade (Dec. 5) at which everyone is relieved when the Steppin’ Bulldogs marching band rolls through to bring order and triumph to the proceedings. (Suites at the recently opened Restoration on King hotel overlook the route.) The low country’s oysters are at their peak, so we combine our love for the briny bivalves with our fervor for the pageantry of the season by ordering buckets of shuck-your-own and snagging a waterside table at Fleet Landing Restaurant & Bar on the night of the Parade of Boats (Dec. 4), when local skippers decorate their sloops with colored lights and cruise around the harbor. —Matt Lee and Ted Lee

New York City, Santa Barbara and Maui were the only US cities included on the list, and the majority of the “Best Places” are international cities, like: Provance, France; Reykjavík, Iceland and Tokyo, Japan.