Context:

Leighton Lord is my father. Given this relation to me, I was interested in procuring some folklore that both of us participated in, but obviously from his perspective as he and my mother were the ones who set the traditions that we followed. Another unique perspective he has is being instilled in Southern traditions after twenty two years spent in Columbia, South Carolina following his marriage to my mother, a native South Carolinian. He grew up in Delaware, and was fascinated upon arriving in the South and witnessing the obsession with tradition and particularly talk about ancestors. I collected several pieces of folklore from him during a recent trip he made to Los Angeles. He currently practices law.

Transcript: 

Owen: Can you talk about our Home Alone tradition? From your perspective.

Leighton: I guess from my perspective, we wanted to have traditions, have traditions that were fun, that everyone enjoyed. I think everyone in our family enjoys movies. It was kind of the easiest thing. Kind of doing the same thing every year. Forced us to be in the same room…you know…the older you get. It’s harder now to do things like that.

Interpretation:

Small family traditions like this one are interesting because as a kid the context of most of your life is your family and your household. So our tradition of watching the movie Home Alone seemed a uniquely Lord tradition to me. Of course, as I grew older and spent time around more and more people, I learned that many families watch a Christmas themed movie on Christmas Eve and many specifically watch Home Alone. It was also interesting hearing about this tradition from the man who started it. As you can tell from his rather general explanation, he simply felt a need to establish a tradition of some sort on a date where every family seems to be doing something together.