“ À la peau ,” the room echoed, and a hundred glasses clinked in the firelight.
The adults received theirs with quiet nods. Chantal received Patience . Gérard received Tendresse . He looked at the stone, then at his wife, and a silent understanding passed between them. french nudist christmas celebration
Tonight, that philosophy was on full display. At a card table in the corner, a group of teenagers—usually the most self-conscious age—were playing a fierce game of belote . They were naked too, and while the boys had initially tried to sit with hands perpetually in their laps, by the second game they had forgotten. Luc, seventeen, with a constellation of acne on his shoulders, had just won a trick and slapped his bare thigh in triumph. His opponent, fifteen-year-old Manon, laughed and called him a crétin , utterly unbothered by the fact that her own body was in the middle of its own awkward, beautiful transformation. “ À la peau ,” the room echoed,
“Gérard! The fire!” called his wife, Chantal, from across the room. She was knitting a small woolen cap—not for herself, but for the village’s newborn, a baby who would, of course, attend her first naturist Christmas in just a diaper, because even in the south of France, December required some concessions. Gérard received Tendresse
The mistral wind had finally died, leaving the Provence sky a crisp, deep sapphire. On a hillside overlooking the Luberon valley, the village of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps lay quiet. But it was not asleep. In the largest of the converted stone farmhouses, a warm, golden light spilled from every window, carrying with it the scent of roasting chestnuts, pine resin, and mulled wine spiced with star anise and orange.
Outside, the first flakes of a rare Provençal snow began to fall. They landed silently on the slate roof, on the dormant lavender fields, on the bare limbs of the olive trees. And inside, a hundred naked bodies, warm and alive, breathed together in the dark.