City of Hurricane Christmas House Decorating Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the City of Hurricane Christmas House Decorating Contest?

The Christmas House Decorating Contest is a holiday-season ballot run by the City of Hurricane, the municipal government of Hurricane, West Virginia. It lives on hurricanewv.com, the city's own domain, among the departments and resident services the site already carries, from Parks & Recreation to the Utility Online Payment Portal. The footer credits the website build to Vandalia Digital, which marks the ballot as civic infrastructure rather than a media promotion.

The contest works as a public tally: entrants decorate their homes for Christmas, supporters read through the displays and back a favorite, and the counted votes decide which house comes out ahead. No newspaper, radio station or chamber of commerce stands between the city and the ballot, so questions about rules, dates and results belong to City Hall rather than to an outside publisher.

Where the contest sits on the city site

The ballot page carries the city's masthead and navigation, which puts the vote in the same frame as the Fire Department, the Police Department and the City Park Map. For a voter, that framing matters: the programme is presented as a community event for residents, and the city itself is the authority behind it.

When does the Hurricane Christmas decorating vote take place?

The ballot's confirmed history begins, and ends for now, with the 2025 cycle. The city timed the vote to the holiday displays themselves, so the window falls inside December 2025. One dated sentence anchors the whole calendar, printed on the contest page: "The deadline to vote is December 17, 2025."

Around that closing point, the city leaves several details off the page. No opening day is printed, so nobody can say from the published text alone when submissions began. No entry or nomination round is described, and no results announcement date appears beside the deadline. The practical reading is simple: treat December 17 as fixed and treat everything earlier in the month as flexible until the city states otherwise.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Working timeline for the 2025 window

How do you vote in the Christmas house contest?

Supporting a decorated home takes a short sequence. Start by opening the contest page at hurricanewv.com/christmascontest/ during the December window. The page invites visitors to enjoy the displays around town and then come back to the ballot, so seeing the houses in person and voting online go together. Next, read the entries and settle on the home you want to reward. Last, submit the choice through the ballot on that page.

The single-counted-vote rule

The city prints its voting rule in plain words: "Please note: Only one vote will be counted, so choose your favorites wisely." Under that rule a family whose members each submit separately adds several counted votes, while one person returning to click again gains nothing beyond the initial choice.

Devices and access

The ballot is a normal page on the city's domain, so a phone browser reaches it as easily as a desktop. Nothing on the page describes a sign-in wall, an app download or a fee, and the city's navigation treats the vote as an open resident activity.

Which West Virginia vote programmes sit closest to this one?

Hurricane's ballot is unusual in the state's public-vote field because a city government runs it. Much of the neighbouring company comes from publisher and county surveys: the Herald-Dispatch's Best in the Tri-State covers the region's businesses and services, the 2025 River Cities Best of the Best ballot follows the same best-of pattern along the river corridors, and county titles such as 2026 Best of Harrison, 2026 Best of Marion County and 2026 Best of Upshur County poll local favorites across whole counties.

The closest thematic cousin is the ABB Scarecrow Contest (Bridgeport), another seasonal display contest rather than a business survey. Where the Bridgeport programme celebrates autumn yard art, Hurricane's vote settles on Christmas decorating. And where those county and regional surveys spread attention widely, the Hurricane ballot narrows to a single subject, decorated homes, inside the city limits.

For a supporter the difference is practical. A county or regional survey divides attention across many subjects, while the Hurricane ballot concentrates every vote on decorated homes, which makes street-level outreach unusually decisive here.

How can a favorite house gain ground before the deadline?

Because the city tallies a single vote per person, breadth beats repetition. Every distinct adult who opens hurricanewv.com/christmascontest/ and submits adds a fresh count, so the productive move is recruiting new voters, not returning to the ballot yourself. Share the link through a neighborhood group chat, a school newsletter or a church bulletin early in December, and remind people the window shuts on December 17. The city publishes no promotional channel for entrants, so ordinary community networks carry the whole load. Tactics that suit community ballots of this kind are gathered in our guide to getting more votes online, and the city's printed rule stays in view throughout: each person contributes one counted vote.