This weekend Khéma brings La Chandeleur and the chance to indulge in piles of delicious crêpes at Khéma. But what is La Chandeleur, and why do the French love it so?
It’s hard to imagine that there is any need in France for a designated crepe-eating-day, but there it is. We prefer to think of it as another one of their appealing quirks; it’s certainly a tasty one. Thus, every year on February 2, the French celebrate La Chandeleur with plenty of crêpes to usher in an abundant year ahead.
La Chandeleur today is theoretically a Christian tradition celebrated 40 days after Christmas (now that everyone’s waistlines have subsided a little), but it’s really a descendant of several pagan celebrations of the earth’s fertility and the beginning of the end of another long, cold, dark winter. It was also a handy way of getting rid of any left-over wheat.
The celebration is distinct from Shrove (Pancake) Tuesday that many non-French will be familiar with. However, the French don’t eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Instead, they eat richer, fatty foods to make up for the next 40 days of Lent when they would traditionally refrain from eating meat, hence the name Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).
La Chandeleur – also called La Fête de la Lumière — has its own range of traditions and superstitions. For example, if you were cooking at home, instead of sitting down in the comfort of Khéma, you need to make sure you toss the crêpe in the frying pan with your right hand while holding a piece of gold in your left. If it flips over first time, then you know there’ll be plenty of money for the year to come (traditions are not required to be rational, as this one clearly demonstrates).
And if you think that one’s odd, in the French-Comté region, they say that if you’re able to get all the way home from church while carrying a lit candle, then it’s sure that you’ll stay alive for the year, which is surely very reassuring. It also shows that traditions, while not necessarily rational, are at least able to apply a basic level of reason since no one has proposed applying this one to those attending Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Playing on the hopeful, early-spring theme of sowing the seeds of abundance for the year to come, people used to place a single Franc coin on their baked crêpes, then let it cool down before rolling it in paper and placing it in the back of the wardrobe for the year ahead. Wardrobes appear to be a feature of French traditions, and in Brittany brides are advised to toss a Chandeleur crêpe on top of the wardrobe if she wants to be married within the year – presumably to someone with loose views on house-keeping.
Bretons, ever the show-offs when it comes to crêpes, have also decided that you’re no one unless you’re able to flip six of them at once. We suspect that someone invented the bridal crêpe on top of the wardrobe custom after one of these went wrong.
Weather is also an important feature of La Chandeleur, albeit in ways that don’t strictly hold for Cambodia. They say that if rains on La Chandeleure, it’ll rain for another 40 days more.
But come rain, or undoubted shine, one thing is sure, there’ll be heaps of delicious, fresh crêpes at Khéma and pots of creamy Nutella, sugar, orange zest and brandy to go with them. We only ask that you don’t hide them in any of our cupboards.
