La Chandeleur - candles and pancakes!

La Chandeleur is Candlemas - 2nd February. It marks the end of the Christmas period (phew- long celebrations) and commemorates the day Jesus was presented in the Temple as was traditional for a Jewish baby at that time. People remember Jesus as the Light of the World, and his mother Mary, and the prophets Simeon and Anna, who caught a glimpse of what this new baby meant for the world. I did some of the usual Googling to find out more, and discovered this translation of a beautiful French Canadian prayer for la Chandeleur:

God our Father, source of all light,
today you revealed to Simeon
your Light of revelation to the nations.
Bless these candles and make them holy.
May we who carry them to praise your glory
walk in the path of goodness
and come to the light that shines for ever.
Grant this through Christ our Lord.

But the most popular French tradition at la Chandeleur is all about food.

Yes, our family celebrates two Pancake Days here - the French one today and the British one on Shrove Tuesday. Yum, yum!When we first arrived in France I enquired about the reasons for the pancakes on la Chandeleur and was told a lovely, moving story. It's the one I promised Sumea yesterday. However, all this Googling has completely failed to turn up any version of the story, so I'm beginning to think I was given a garbled version! Briefly, it was about a Pope who stopped his Candlemas celebrations in order to feed pancakes to the cold and hungry pilgrims outside St. Peter's. I think that's a great story - what Christian leadership should all be about, but unfortunately it seems to be totally unbased on fact, even Wiki-fact!

Instead, it seems to be more accurate to say that, "during the Lupercales, the Romans were already baking pancakes of flour and water, sweetened with honey. Their golden colour served as a symbol of the warm sun. The return of the sun was also highly anticipated by the people of Northern Europe and the Celts. Pope Gelase would feed the pilgrims with pancakes when they reached Rome. Crèpes were made with the flour from the previous wheat crop, and that flour could be used somewhat liberally since the new crop was not that far away anymore." So no specific reference to his generosity, more to his good sense in switching an old festival into a Christian one. He was North African - did you know there have been three North African popes?Well, what do you think of the sausages? This is a typical saussice de Toulouse - beloved of Son 2's former rugby BBQs. We decided to put sausages into the pancakes today.

I made a tomato-based sauce, too, and we finished with chocolate sauce and ice cream on some sweet pancakes!

May we... walk in the path of goodness
and come to the light that shines for ever.