Deck the Town Holiday Light Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Deck the Town and who runs it?

Deck the Town is a December light-display competition for the greater Chambersburg area, hosted by the Greater Chambersburg Area Chamber of Commerce. Its own listing bills the program as "Chambersburg's FIRST Holiday Light Display Contest," and it invites both homes and businesses to register a festive exterior light display for the public to judge. Entry costs nothing; the money enters on the voting side, where each vote carries a $1 price whose proceeds are donated to the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter. The ballot does not sit on a polling platform. It runs as an event listing inside the business directory of the Cumberland Valley Business Alliance at business.cvballiance.org, the same domain whose footer prints the alliance's 2026 copyright, a street address at 100 Lincoln Way East in Chambersburg, the phone line 717.264.7101 and the inbox [email protected]. A visitor reaches the contest the way any chamber event is reached, through the calendar entry titled "Deck the Town: Holiday Light Contestant Entry."

Quick facts at a glance

Item	Detail
Program	Deck the Town: Holiday Light Contestant Entry
Host	Greater Chambersburg Area Chamber of Commerce
Listing home	business.cvballiance.org event calendar
Market	Greater Chambersburg area, Pennsylvania
Eligible entrants	Homes and businesses with festive exterior light displays
Entry fee	Free
Vote price	$1 per vote
Proceeds	Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter

What distinguishes this ballot from a typical chamber awards poll is the subject matter. The contest judges a physical display rather than a business category, so a vote is an opinion about a house or storefront a supporter can drive past, and the $1 price doubles as a charitable gift. Anyone weighing participation should read the listing itself before registering, since the Chamber controls entry and voting through that page alone.

Which editions are confirmed and what dates govern the 2025 cycle?

The Chamber's event calendar carries Deck the Town listings for 2024 and 2025, which is the basis for treating the program as an annual December fixture. The 2024 listing was dated December 9; the 2025 listing carries the December 8 entry deadline. No earlier edition appears on the calendar the Chamber publishes, and the event page sketches no history before 2024.

Stage	2025 date	Notes
Entry deadline	Monday, December 8	Free registration for homes and businesses
Property map release	December 10	A Google map plots every entered property
Voting window	December 10 thru 22	The public votes for the winners
Winner announcement	Not printed on the listing	No reveal date is given

The 2025 sequence is explicit on the listing itself. Properties register at no cost until Monday, December 8. A Google map plotting every entered property goes up on December 10, and voting stays open from December 10 thru 22. What the page leaves out matters as much as what it prints: the listing shows no roster of display categories or judging groups; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The page likewise never states when winners will be revealed after the window shuts, nor whether a 2026 round will follow the pattern of 2024 and 2025.

How does a supporter actually cast a vote in Deck the Town?

Casting a vote in Deck the Town means visiting the contest's event page on business.cvballiance.org during the December window and purchasing votes for the display you favour. Each vote costs $1, and the proceeds are handed to the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter, so the act of voting is also a small charitable gift. The listing describes no account requirement, no login wall and no app; it presents the purchase directly on the event page. Because the Chamber releases a Google map of all entered properties on December 10, a supporter can locate displays across the greater Chambersburg area and spread purchases among several favourites, limited only by whatever budget the household sets. The event page prints no ceiling on how many $1 votes a buyer may cast, and it states no restriction on backing your own property. For readers weighing paid support of any public ballot, general mechanics are covered on the site's overview of buying votes online; this contest's own rule is simpler, since voting and paying happen in the same gesture.

How does this December ballot compare with Pennsylvania's other best-of contests?

Deck the Town belongs to Pennsylvania's pool of public-vote ballots, but its neighbours are almost all media products. Six best-of programs share the state with it: Best of Berks from Berks County Living Magazine, Best of Philly from Philadelphia Magazine, Best of the 'Burgh, Best of the Lehigh Valley from Lehigh Valley Style, the Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice run by suburban newspapers, and Erie Reader's Best of Erie.

Pennsylvania best-of neighbours

Ballot	Publisher or host	Coverage named in the title
Best of Berks	Berks County Living Magazine	Berks County
Best of Philly	Philadelphia Magazine	Philadelphia
Best of the 'Burgh	Self-titled program	The 'Burgh
Best of the Lehigh Valley	Lehigh Valley Style	The Lehigh Valley
Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice	Suburban newspapers	Bucks and Chester counties
Erie Reader Best of Erie	Erie Reader	Erie

Several contrasts stand out. The Chamber runs Deck the Town as a single-subject seasonal fundraiser, while the magazine ballots spread broad category rosters across dining, retail and services through much of the year. The money flows differently too: a $1 shelter-bound vote is a fundraising device, where reader's-choice ballots tend to monetise through advertising and sponsorship instead. Geography narrows as well, from metro-scale readerships down to displays scattered along the streets of Chambersburg and its surroundings. Readers mapping the wider field can start at Best of Philly and move outward through the sibling pages listed below.

How can a display's supporters grow its vote count before December 22?

A campaign here looks unlike a standard fan-poll push, because the currency is purchased $1 votes rather than free clicks. Support therefore has a cash shape: friends, coworkers and customers who want a display to finish near the top buy their votes during the December 10 thru 22 window. Practical moves follow from the calendar. Owners who intend to compete should register well before the Monday, December 8 deadline so the property makes it onto the Google map published December 10, then circulate that map link with the voting instructions attached. The Chamber's listing takes no position on outside voting help, and it publishes no guidance beyond the entry and window dates, so anybody organising a push works from the ballot's own terms. Technique that applies across public ballots of this kind is collected in the guide to getting more votes online, which covers outreach patterns that do not depend on any particular platform.