France has a unique tradition of barefoot pilgrimages to nature-linked saints on Christmas Eve. The most famous is to Saint Guinefort, a martyred greyhound (yes, a dog declared a folk saint) in a forest near Lyon. Though condemned by the Church, locals still leave bare branches and candles for the dog-saint on December 24, praying for children and livestock. Similarly, in the Pyrenees, shepherds walk bare-legged through frozen streams to the Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows, carrying only a single candle — a breathtaking fusion of “enature,” “bare,” and French Catholic Christmas.

While Hollywood imagines French Christmas as Parisian shop windows and foie gras, traditional Provençal and Alpine celebrations are profoundly nature-based. The French phrase Noël à cru (bare Christmas, sometimes interpreted as “raw Christmas”) refers to celebrations held outdoors, with minimal shelter, reenacting the hardship of the manger.

In the Jura mountains and the Massif Central, families build a crèche vivante (living nativity) not in a barn but in a forest clearing — “enature” at its most literal. Shepherds bring real sheep, and the Holy Family is depicted huddled around a fire of pine boughs, shivering without modern coats (the “bare” aspect). This practice, revived by the Abbey of Sénanque in the 1970s, draws hundreds seeking an unvarnished Christmas.

You don’t need to live in a log cabin in Montana or summit Everest to claim this lifestyle. It is a spectrum of intentional choices: