Christmas YA

Hey all, I'm Chantal, this is my first post here ever (but feel free to visit my blog ;) ). I write mainly Urban Fantasy of the crappy kind and adult Sci-fi of the even crappier kind. Yeah, I'm still working on the self-esteem thing.

I thought I'd write about Christmas YA fiction, something I've been thinking of trying my hand at some day.

I remember hating Christmas stories as a teen/YA. Even before that actually. They were always corny and full of happy warm mushy feelings without any sort of gripping, meaningful plot. Aside from Christmas traditional tales like the one with the Little Match Girl which, to this day, still makes me cry. One thing that really annoyed me was that the parents always saved the day. Or worse, Santa!

Most fiction around Xmas/Hanukkah/Yule etc seems to be aimed at very young children. Surfing with the Amazon, I found some books classified as YA with Christmassy themes but they all seem to be basically the same stuff with more words. At best, it some kind of teen love story of the sort "he kissed her under the mistletoe! He must love her now!".

So I ask you all, are there any decent, smart Christmassy YA books out there? Something with a meaningful, interesting, non-trivial plot that ties up nicely with the spirit of the season? Oh and, not uber religious for those of us who don't care for religion, just for the message?