For The Best Decorated Christmas Tree: How Voting Works & How to Win

A December ballot a decorated tree has to win

The problem a nominating business faces here is simple: the window is short, it sits inside a crowded month, and the station does not hand you a calendar. For The Best Decorated Christmas Tree is run by KMXJ-FM, the Texas radio station broadcasting as Mix 94.1, and the ballot sits on mix941kmxj.com, the broadcaster's own domain. No third-party balloting service stands between the supporter and the vote, which means the entries, the rules and the result all appear on that one page.

The station frames the stage clearly: the entries are in, and it is now time for visitors to vote for the winner. A business whose tree is on that ballot therefore has one job during the window, moving people to the page and getting them to vote, and one risk, mistiming the push because the exact days are not printed with the contest.

The facts of the programme

Because the host is the broadcaster itself, everything a supporter needs sits on one page rather than spread across a platform's screens. That is convenient, but it also means there is no separate rules hub to consult; the contest page is the whole rulebook.

What the December history confirms and what it leaves out

The dated history of this programme is unusually clean on one point and quiet on another. Five edition years are confirmed: 2019, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Every confirmed cycle falls in December, which makes the contest a seasonal fixture on the station's calendar rather than a year-round promotion. The most recent confirmed run was 2026, so the next expected edition is 2027, and the station has not published a forward calendar saying so in advance.

What that history does not settle is the shape of the month. The station has not printed the exact day the vote opens or the exact day it closes alongside the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same quietness covers the rules: no per-supporter vote limit, no eligibility terms and no stated round dates appear with the contest material.

For a business planning a push, that combination matters. The month is known, so the campaign can be built in advance. The days are not, so the launch of the push has to wait for the page itself to say voting is open. Treat the first week of December as the checkpoint: open the contest page, look for the line announcing that the entries are in, and only then start moving supporters to the ballot. A push launched before the window opens spends goodwill on people who cannot yet vote, and one launched after the close spends it on people who no longer can.

How a supporter votes on the station's own ballot

The mechanic is the plainest kind of public vote. A supporter opens the contest page on mix941kmxj.com, sees the decorated tree entries the station has collected, picks the one to back, and submits the vote the page asks for. The station's own framing, that the entries are in and it is time to vote for the winner, tells you the ballot arrives at the voting stage directly, with no separate nomination round printed alongside it.

Because the host is the broadcaster's own site, the vote sits among the station's other December promotions and quick links. That makes the exact contest address valuable: supporters who are sent the direct link land on the tree ballot, while supporters who wander the site can end up on a different offer entirely. Share the link, not a description of where to click.

Two habits make a supporter's vote count. First, read whatever instructions the page prints beside the entries before voting a second time, since the station has published no frequency rule away from the ballot. Second, vote inside the December window and treat the page's own status line as the clock. If the page still says voting is open, the vote lands; if the page has moved on to the result, it does not. The result itself appears on the same page, so the place a supporter voted is the place the winning tree is named.

Where this ballot sits among Texas best-of contests

Public-vote programmes are plentiful across Texas, and this one is the seasonal outlier. The state's larger readers polls run on magazine and publication schedules and cover whole markets: the Best of Austin Readers Poll, the Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, the Best of El Paso, the Best of Houston, the Best of San Antonio and Best of Fort Worth from Fort Worth Magazine.

For The Best Decorated Christmas Tree has a different publisher and a different shape. KMXJ-FM runs it on the broadcaster's own domain, it asks a single seasonal question rather than a multi-category slate, and it concentrates the whole contest into December. A business competing here is not competing against a city's entire business directory, only against the other decorated trees the station accepted as entries.

That narrowness cuts both ways. The pool of entries is small, so each supporter's vote carries more weight than it would in a statewide readers poll. But the audience is the station's listeners in Texas, so a tree whose customer base does not overlap with that audience has to work harder to reach people who can vote. The practical takeaway is to treat this ballot as a listener campaign: reach the KMXJ-FM audience where it already gathers, and send them to the one page that holds the vote.

Strengthening support inside this ballot's rules

Support in this contest is a December sprint, so the tactics that work are the ones that fit a short window on a station's own site. Start by sending people the direct contest link rather than directions, because the ballot sits among the station's other promotions and a wrong click costs a vote. Ask supporters to vote early in the window, then ask again as often as the page's own instructions permit, since the station has published no frequency rule away from the ballot.

The organizer's printed material says nothing about outside help, purchased votes or software, so there is no published allowance to lean on and no published ban to quote; the ballot page is the only authority. What is certain is the shape of the audience: KMXJ-FM listeners in Texas, reached most easily through the same channels that already back the business. For a fuller treatment of the buying question in programmes like this one, see buying award votes.