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.

The feast was a marvel. Because it was a naturist celebration, the food was taken with particular seriousness. There is a joke in the community: A clothed person eats. A naked person savors. Without the weight of fabric, without the tight waistband or the scratchy collar, digestion seemed to begin with the eyes. The table groaned under a wild boar pâté from the Alpilles, a dinde aux marrons (turkey with chestnuts) so succulent it needed no carving knife, and a pyramid of oysters from the Bassin d’Arcachon, which were opened with the same gentle precision one might use to unwrap a lover’s gift. french nudist christmas celebration

“Nudity is the great equalizer,” Chantal often said. “You cannot hate the person whose scars and stretch marks you see. You cannot envy the person whose belly is soft in the same winter light as yours.” Tonight, that philosophy was on full display

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. Luc, seventeen, with a constellation of acne on