The Lafayette Mississippi Homemakers Council and the Mississippi State Extension Service will have its annual Holiday House today and Saturday. The event is co-sponsored by the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council and the Lafayette County Arena.

The Holiday House Craft Fair will be held at the Lafayette County Arena, 70 FD Buddy East Parkway, today until 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

At Mississippi State University, in the Bost Extension Center lobby, hangs a beautiful, floor-to-ceiling needlepoint map of Mississippi’s 82 counties. On the tapestry, Lafayette County displays a book inscribed with the name William Faulkner along with the date 1950, which is when he received the Nobel Prize in literature and 1955 and when he earned the Pulitzer Prize.

Rae Clark of Lauderdale County, who has been a Mississippi Homemaker volunteer for more than 50 years, helped sew that map. She says “being a Mississippi Homemaker Volunteer is more about togetherness and relationships than it is about completing projects. It’s all about the people.”

Lafayette County has been a home for the Mississippi Homemaker Volunteers (MHV) since at least 1968, when the late Queenie Dixon became involved as an active member and served MHV for more than 50 years. She also served as council secretary for six years, parliamentarian for at least six years and council president for two.

At its peak in Lafayette County, when Dixon was president in 1984, there were 10 MHV clubs and 179 members. Two of Dixon’s daughters, Fannie Evans and Dorothy Dixon, are carrying on the MHV tradition.