Our neighbours have asked us to come around to their house on Tuesday next to eat Crepes for Chandeleur.

I made the assumption that this was a celebration of St. Blaise’s day , this was always the day in Catholic Ireland when we went to the church to have our throats blessed. There we all knelt down at the altar and the priest came and placed crossed candles at our throat to protect us from sore throats during the year to come. Thus , for the last few years , when we saw the time come around for Chandeleur to be celebrated (traditionally with pancakes) at the begining of February , we assumed it came from a devotion to St. Blaise.

When our neighbour invited us to celebrate Chandeleur with them next Tuesday I mentioned St. Blaise and was greeted with a blank stare , it was obvious that she had never heard of him, obviously some research was needed.

First thing I discovered was that I had my dates wrong , Chandeleur is celebrated on the 2nd of February , St. Blaise has his day on the 3rd.
Chandeleur is in fact Candlemas , the day in which people brought their candles into the church to be blessed. This feast seems to have merged in time with the purification of the Virgin Mary (which seems to be like the Catholic post birth churching) and the presentation of Jesus in the temple.

Then I learned something else , Candlemas is thought to be a relic of an ancient pre-christian festival of light . It celebrates the day which is mid way between the shortest day and the spring equinox and the return of brightness.

À la Chandeleur, l’hiver cesse ou reprend vigueur
On Candlemas, winter ends or strengthens

In other words what we have here is a christianisation of an old pagan festival of light christianised as are Christmas and indeed Halloween.
In Ireland, a nation suffering from constant winter colds and flu, we use the candles practically as a guard against sore throats- in France they (typically) use the feast as another excuse to party.