SCHOA Christmas Lights Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the SCHOA Christmas Lights Contest is and who runs it

The SCHOA Christmas Lights Contest, printed on the ballot as the Merry and Bright Christmas Lights Contest, is a holiday decorations competition run by SCHOA for its members in Sun City, Arizona. The association's office sits at 10401 W. Coggins Drive, Sun City, AZ 85351, and the contest is one of the community events the organization promotes alongside its compliance work, newsletters and member services.

Unlike the reader's-choice ballots that newspapers run across Arizona, this one lives on suncityhoa.org itself rather than a commercial voting platform. The 2025 ballot sits at suncityhoa.org/2025lights/, and the same domain carries the registration form, the rules and the winners announcements. That makes the association itself the publisher, the host and the rule-writer in one, which matters when a member wants to know who decides anything about the contest.

Displays compete in named categories. The 2025 ballot lists the Griswold (Lights), Lights and More Lights!, the Go Big or Go Home (Best Use of Inflatables), the Gingerbread (Best Homemade Decorations) and the Small but Sparkly (Porches and Condos). The category names tell a member roughly what kind of display fits where: an over-the-top light show, an inflatable-heavy yard, homemade decorations, or a modest porch effort.

The dated record: which editions ran and when the window falls

Two editions of the Merry and Bright contest are confirmed: 2024 and 2025. Both are anchored to December, and the association has described the program as the first of a planned annual tradition, which is why the 2026 cycle is the reasonable next expectation even though its dates are not yet printed anywhere.

The 2025 cycle has a two-phase shape. Registration of displays runs from Nov. 4 through Dec. 4, giving households a month to sign up before judging begins. Community voting then takes place from Dec. 15 through Dec. 28, a two-week window that covers the stretch when Sun City displays are lit and neighbours are out walking after dark. The printed rules also note that lights should be available for viewing during that period, so an entry that goes dark early risks its votes.

The ballot page leaves out how winners are determined beyond the community vote, whether any prize attaches to each category, or how results are ranked; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The rules as printed cover eligibility, registration dates, the voting window and the one-vote-per-person limit, and stop there.

For a member planning an entry, the practical reading of these dates is simple: register during November, keep the display lit through Dec. 28, and expect the same broad shape of the calendar in the next cycle, with the exact dates published on the association's site when that cycle opens.

How a supporter votes in the Merry and Bright contest today

The voting process is deliberately simple, because the organizer wants every member of a retirement community to be able to participate without an account or an app. A supporter visits suncityhoa.org during the Dec. 15 to Dec. 28 window, browses the registered displays by category, selects a favourite and submits. The printed rules allow one vote per person, so there is no daily return and no reason to bookmark the page for repeat visits.

That single-vote rule changes how a household should think about the ballot. In a contest where supporters return every day, a reminder campaign spreads over two weeks. Here, the entire value of a supporter is one ballot, so the ask is to vote once and vote deliberately. A household with several members holds several ballots between them, which is the only way to multiply support under these rules.

Because the ballot sits on the association's own site rather than a voting platform, there is no separate login step beyond whatever the page itself requires, and no platform-specific account to create. Supporters who already read SCHOA newsletters or follow the association's Facebook page will find the ballot linked from the same channels that carry the winners announcement after Dec. 28.

The practical sequence for the 2025 cycle: open the ballot, read the category labels, choose one display, submit, and encourage every other member of the household to do the same before the window closes.

How this ballot sits beside other Arizona community votes

Arizona readers who follow community ballots will recognize a different shape here. The state's larger best-of programs, such as Best of Havasu, Best of Sedona Kudos and Best of Verde Valley, are newspaper-run ballots covering whole towns or regions across dozens of business categories. The SCHOA contest is the opposite in scale: one association, one community, one seasonal subject, and eligibility limited to members.

That difference matters for anyone comparing vote strategies across programs. A regional best-of ballot rewards broad outreach because the eligible voter pool is large and the vote rules are usually per-day. The Merry and Bright ballot rewards depth inside a small pool: every SCHOA member household in Sun City is a potential voter, and each holds exactly one vote. Programs such as CommunityVotes Buckeye and Best of the 'Burg (Wickenburg Sun) sit between those poles.

The seasonal focus is the other distinguishing feature. Where a best-of ballot asks voters to compare businesses they use all year, this contest asks them to judge a display they can see from the street, which makes the appeal personal and immediate. An entrant who wants a wider business-facing audience in Arizona would run both kinds of programs side by side rather than treating one as a substitute for the other.

Strengthening support for a Sun City display under a one-vote rule

Because the printed rules give each person a single vote, the winning move in Sun City is coverage, not repetition. Map out every member household you can reach: neighbours on your street, people in your club or church group, family members who belong to SCHOA. Each of them holds one ballot, and an unasked neighbour is a lost vote in a way that a daily-vote contest never experiences.

Timing matters too. The window runs Dec. 15 through Dec. 28, and displays must be lit for viewing during that stretch. A display that goes up late, or a string of lights that fails mid-window, wastes the ballots you have already earned. Check your display every evening of the voting period before you push for votes.

The organizer's rules say nothing about outside promotional help, and the one-vote-per-person limit is the binding constraint regardless: no service can add ballots that the rules do not grant. What works is making the ask easy, giving supporters the exact ballot address, naming your category so they know where to find you, and asking before Dec. 28 rather than after. For a fuller walkthrough of outreach tactics that respect contest rules, see how to get more votes online.