As Christmas day approaches, the rush to find the perfect gifts to give becomes an obsession. Bobby wants the latest high-tech gadget. Martha needs the season’s hottest toy. All manufactured gifts given with love. But were they made with love?
Our travels have taken us to Lafayette, Louisiana. Commercials and stores advertise their wares, just like at home. Enticing buyers to shop local. However, when we visited the Vermilionville Living History Museum & Folklife Park, we wandered into one of the historic homes to find a docent patiently spinning thread. No shopping frenzy. Just the whirl of the spinning wheel and quiet tap of her foot on the pedal.
She demonstrated the technique of spinning raw cotton into balls that would then be taken to a loom and worked into homespun material. This material used to make a shirt. A precious necessity, spun with hours of loving work.
Did you know:
-it took women 50 hours to make an average sized ball of thread?
-sometimes it took a year to make a man’s shirt?
-feeding the spindle took patient attention and required constant foot action to press the pedal to make the wheel spin?
Today, finding a shirt wrapped in shiny paper and adorned with ribbons and bows under the tree might seem anti-climactic in comparison to a new computer. But, if it was a homespun shirt, wrapped in plain brown paper, created with hours of loving attention, it was a gift that provided a necessity and illustrated the true meaning of Christmas. Love is truly all.
Vermilionville provides historic representation of different communities that lived in Acadiana: the Creoles, the Native Americans, and the Africian descendants of this area from 1765-1890. Highly recommend it. https://bayouvermiliondistrict.org/vermilionville/
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