Christmas games finally make a solid showing as holiday fever hits Facebook in this week’s top 20 gaining games list for daily active users.

Before Christmas, it’s PetVille which is still the strongest growing daily game on Facebook. The game has 3.5 million daily active users as of this morning, up 8 percent over last week. That percentage is one of the lowest of the week — however, it still amounts to 287,006 new players. Also, (Lil) Farm Life is continuing to add players. The game, released in August, has stood against the FarmVille juggernaut and added 246,000, approximately 17 percent to its player base of 1.4 million this week. Meanwhile, neither FarmVille or FishVille make an appearance for adding new daily active users.

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	PetVille	3,446,842	+287,006	+8.33
2.	Santa Yourself	425,028	+279,879	+65.85
3.	(Lil) Farm Life	1,427,667	+246,405	+17.26
4.	Texas HoldEm Poker	4,973,264	+245,876	+4.94
5.	Fish Isle	951,734	+117,440	+12.34
6.	Paf le Chien	187,911	+112,773	+60.01
7.	UNO™	299,006	+87,901	+29.40
8.	Forever Friends	203,784	+46,025	+22.59
9.	Jungle Jewels	251,549	+30,868	+12.27
10.	Tattoodle	348,603	+18,119	+5.20
11.	My Stuff	117,815	+16,497	+14.00
12.	Say Merry Christmas	23,631	+16,374	+69.29
13.	Christmas Friends Tree	22,131	+12,931	+58.43
14.	點歌零距離	12,315	+9,502	+77.16
15.	Christmas Video	15,867	+9,392	+59.19
16.	Christmas Countdown	21,592	+8,262	+38.26
17.	PetrolHead	14,841	+7,650	+51.55
18.	Yakuza Lords	82,357	+6,559	+7.96
19.	Pirates of the World	65,835	+6,283	+9.54
20.	Tarjetas Animadas – Navidad	5,625	+4,855	+86.31

Also note, Happy Pets, which has consistently shown up in our top 20 lists, both for DAU and MAU, is not showing up do to a timed refresh on our sister site AppData. Just keep in mind, it was a top five game when checked on yesterday and has every reason to rank high come next week. For that matter our DAU lists was compiled from last Dec. 9 – 16; the list, for those not familiar, is a better sign of addicted players than MAU.

We predicted more holiday games would join Santa Yourself on the top 20′s as the holiday got nearer and this week it has finally happened. Six holiday-themed games made an appearance this week — although many of them are not obviously games, but rather gifting or poking apps that have been marked as “games” on Facebook by their developers. Santa Yourself has been consistently on the top 20 and is highest on the list this week. 280,000 new users have found reason to use this app on a daily basis, 66 percent higher than last week. However the titles total DAU is still low for a top five title at 425,028 daily active users.

Farther down on the list was Say Merry Christmas, which does just what is says it does. At 12th the app now has 23,631 people sending messages daily. Behind it is the decorate-the-tree-with-your-friends game Christmas Friends Tree at 13th. People wanting to share Christmas cheer through video helped Christmas Video rise to 15th and the urgency of Christmas coming rose Christmas Countdown to 16th. Finally, 20th, Tarjetas Animadas – Navidad rose 85 percent this week due to our Spanish speaking Facebook friends. The app, as far as I can tell, animates your head onto Christmas characters like Rudolph and such.

Low numbers this week, but not uncommon for the DAU. Next week should be interesting to see how badly the holiday season floods the top lists, how many other holiday games might make an appearance and if the ‘Ville games can make a dent despite their incredibly high total DAU.