Indeed it is, a secular (well actually an Anglo Saxon pagan)"small t" tradition.
"The Bible is quite clear about Mary and Joseph having sex and other children."
M, no one, until a generation or two after the Reformers, believed that. That's just an historical fact. As I have said before, maybe the Holy Spirit went off for a nap for the first 1500 years after Pentecost, but I doubt it. Maybe, maybe the the Evil One has misled a rebellious people, the protestants, into heresy after you rejected all of what your Holy Mother Church was teaching instead of simply and appropriately "reforming" those areas where Rome had strayed from the Faith.
"They could have just made it up and passed it off as being true and here are millions of people believing something on their say so that is not even alluded to in the Bible."
The bishops who put the NT together for you could have lied to you too, M.
"There's no reason in the world to pass off this nonsense about the immaculate conception of Mary and her perpetual virginity."
M, do you know what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is? Do you know that the Reformers believed in the Blessed Mother's perpetual virginity? Why do you suppose that the Holy Spirit abandoned His Church for lets say 1600+ years on that subject? BTW, the Immaculate Conception was dogmatized by the Latins in the 1840s, for reasons which escape me but were apparently sufficient for Pope Pius IX. We Orthodox consider it an "innovation", just like the filioque you recite when you pray the Creed. That's not "in the bible" either. Its origins are Spanish (6th century) as a reaction to Arianism. The ONLY reason any protestant prays the Creed with the filioque is because the Roman Catholic Church, your Holy Mother Church, taught it to you that way!
No one, eh? Know that for a fact?
Then why did Matthew put this in his gospel?
Matthew 1:24-25When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
And Matthew and Mark listed his brothers by name (Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3) and all four gospels refer to His mother and His brothers.
M, do you know what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is?
Yes, I do.
Do you know that the Reformers believed in the Blessed Mother's perpetual virginity?
I don't care. It's not what the Bible that the Catholic church claims it wrote says. It says that He has brothers. If the Catholic church meant that He had cousins, why use the word for *brother*? The Reformers didn't shake off all Catholic error instantaneously.
We Orthodox consider it an "innovation", just like the filioque you recite when you pray the Creed.
I don't *pray* the Creed. I pray to God.
That's not "in the bible" either.
Which is why I don't do it.