ST.-MALO, France — On a recent morning, toddlers and teenagers laughed and shouted as they skated around a rink of shiny ice just outside the walls of St.-Malo, a city on the northern coast of Brittany where winters generally hover above freezing.

“Because our region has neither ice nor snow, it’s so magical for the children to get to skate like this,” said Corinne Doli, 65, who snapped photographs of her grandchildren as they glided around on the ice.

But for others, as issues like climate change loom larger than ever in local and national politics, Christmas cheer is competing with growing concern about the environmental cost of holiday rinks.

Though St.-Malo kept its rink, other French cities, including Bordeaux and Rennes, canceled theirs, citing concerns about the size of the carbon footprint needed to maintain them.