How is the distinctive character of Sabbath candles different from the prohibition on eating legumes, which in that case you permit?

You took the words right out of my mouth. Even with a microscope I can’t make out the connection between these two questions.

The Rabbi wrote in his answer, “there is value in it,” which implies there is no actual obligation here, just some vague value that gives the Rabbi some kind of subjective Sabbath experience or something like that. So when the Rabbi writes that it gives a special character, he means that it’s his personal feeling of the holiness of the Sabbath. If so, then when people tell you that the prohibition on legumes on Passover gives people a unique feeling of Passover, you dismiss it, while here it sounds like you actually support it. It seems I managed to explain myself without the help of a microscope, thank God.

Unfortunately, even with a microscope you still didn’t manage. Indeed, there is no obligation to light candles when there is electricity, but that is the custom. And since this custom has a rationale behind it (preserving the special character), there is definitely reason to preserve it. That is unlike legumes, which are not a custom but a concern, and once the concern no longer exists there is no reason to preserve it. In addition, legumes do not create the character of Passover (and what about the Passover character for Sephardim?); rather, that is created by leavened food. So there it is neither a custom nor does it have any rationale in terms of character. So aside from those two points, everything else is indeed similar to our question, of course (for example, the letter n appears in both “legumes” and “candles”). That I can see even without a microscope. 🙂