Christmas is in the air. Three of the top five on this week’s list of up-and-coming Facebook applications reflect the trend towards holiday festivities. With 350 million monthly active users, Facebook is more than ever a popular format for many people looking to spread holiday cheer. We’re interested how sustainable business can be built on top of the holiday theme.

Christmas Kisses doubled its user base last week and has every chance to be in the top 20 apps for overall monthly active users come the next. The app has seen rapid, though steady, growth since about Nov. 22. This week the app raised 49 percent for a new monthly user total of 960,629 people, with about 132,000 using the app every day.

For new readers, this list looks at the Facebook apps that grew most over the past week and ended with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users, according to AppData. This view shows us smaller apps that are growing fast, and may be on their way to our top 20 overall leaderboard.

If you’re interested in the bottom line for seasonal apps this year, it would be wise to follow Christmas Kisses developer Mob Science who, of their 13 apps, have five seasonal titles out this Christmas, six if you count the winter-based Snowball Fight. Interestingly, despite the growth of its seasonal apps, the company lost about a million monthly users this last week for a new total of around 13 million monthly average users.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Christmas Kisses	960,629	+468,189	+48.74
2.	Poker Rivals	681,908	+425,075	+62.34
3.	Christmas Greetings	374,541	+357,808	+95.53
4.	Fun Cards – Christmas & More!	836,697	+355,981	+42.55
5.	Find My Lover	443,072	+245,764	+55.47
6.	Super Farkle	848,347	+215,096	+25.35
7.	Windows Live Messenger	746,368	+211,337	+28.32
8.	Pro League Basketball	529,413	+196,565	+37.13
9.	Happy Hanukkah!	193,136	+186,063	+96.34
10.	Ponzi, Inc.	430,715	+177,514	+41.21
11.	Christmas Animations	265,589	+168,243	+63.35
12.	ScroogeOmeter	399,907	+166,953	+41.75
13.	Youtopia	353,498	+160,361	+45.36
14.	PayPal WishList	460,109	+152,780	+33.21
15.	Top Fish	370,557	+137,133	+37.01
16.	Snowglobes!	289,422	+118,167	+40.83
17.	Confession Station	247,972	+116,925	+47.15
18.	Minigolf Party	941,697	+116,497	+12.37
19.	Happy Pets Community	366,604	+115,946	+31.63
20.	Coke Zero Facial Profiler	143,674	+115,882	+80.6

Playfish’s Poker Rivals is one to watch, as well. The game has succeeded in making a decent-sized dent in the popular poker-game genre. Last week was especially successful with 62 percent or 425,000 new monthly active users. Released on Nov.22, the app just barely missed the list of the top 20 daily users on Wednesday, placing at 23rd.

Christmas Greetings was just released on December 3, however it is showing signs of becoming one of the best performing apps released this month, seasonal or not, in terms of monthly average user rate. The amount of people consistently using the app everyday is rather low for a top gaining app, 120,000 approximately. However, with a monthly active user rate of about 375,000 in eight days, it is one of the more promising seasonal apps this year and was the second fastest gaining app this week for monthly active users, spiking with 95 percent.

However, the fastest gaining app of the top 20 – in relation to its size, mind you – is Happy Hanukah!, which placed ninth overall. The app gained 186,063 new monthly active users this week for a total of 193,136. A 96 percent increase since its release on Nov. 11.

Rounding out the top 20 is Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler. The app kicked off in earnest beginning this month after it was able to attract enough people for the app to work effectively. It now has a 143,674 monthly active users. Its daily active users took a large hit, dropping to a little over 6,000 on Dec. 10, from about 42,000 on Dec. 8. This is a reverse of the growth that the app had from Dec.4 to Dec.5, when the app raised with 46,000 monthly average users.

Overall, we see solid gains for most of the upcoming apps this week and especially for Christmas titles, of which seven were in the top 20. It will be interesting to see how people’s use of apps change come holiday time and if any late holiday apps show up in the coming week.