Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post
The little man in the attic story simpley doesnt equate to even nearly the same thing. The analogy imho and is yet another not so well vieled attempt to insult people of all faiths that differ from your own. Which I might add, is so much the scientific pot calling the religious kettle black.

Your ancestors and family members, the very people you trust in your comunity, didnt pass down stories about him from generation to generation becuase more than one of them saw it or experienced first hand for themselves and felt at the time it was so vitally important to them that their children carry on the same beliefs and traditions as they did into their posterity.
Any smart Pagan knows that "my tradition is older than yours" is a dangerous game. My Scandinavian relatives follow Norse gods whose legends are certainly older than the legend about the revived rabbi, though probably about of an age with the legends about the burning bush and the stone law books. I know people who follow the gods the Egyptians had been worshipping for a thousand years before Moses proclaimed a new one. If ancient tradition were the test of truth, we should all worship the Great Mother depicted in Stone Age idols - which sounds good to me, but I don't think that's what you had in mind.

As for preserving traditions, the same people whose folk wisdom you invoke also passed down a tradition that a fat man in a sleigh drawn by reindeer would bring gifts at Xmas...