Tradition as an authority

“A tradition is a practice, custom, or story that is memorized and passed down from generation to generation, originally without the need for a writing system” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition
Its arguable to say that tradition helps build a religion, take for example Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, Sallah. Different religions celebrate these but they are all traditions passed down from generation to generation but does that on its own make a religion or is it above the holy book of the said religion?
Every culture and every religion has tradition as a foundation. I will be examining tradition as an authority in the next few paragraphs, particularly Christian tradition, as one might know; Christianity places a lot of emphasis on tradition e.g. the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox.
So what is Christian Tradition- “Christian Tradition is the living process whereby each generation within the church receives practices and teachings from the one before and hands on, perhaps slightly altered to the next”.
I wonder if it is then safe to say tradition is just as authoritative as the written scripture. It is obvious that the oral tradition predates written tradition, I mean even the New Testament was written over 20 years after Jesus’ death so it is obvious that people talked about it before it was eventually written down but then again is tradition confused with prophecy and narratives as the bible isn’t just made up of rules and laws to follow but stories, prophecies and doctrines. It is true that Jesus warned against man made traditions but he respected his Jewish traditions. Even St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians talks about tradition “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.......maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you” but perhaps he was asking them to use the tradition as a guide which of course we have to as no one in last thousand or so generation was alive when Jesus was, all we have is the traditions that we practice (written) in relation to the scriptures.
Basil of Caesarea argued in favour of tradition but also acknowledges the fact that tradition and scripture are separate entities “there is an unwritten teaching alongside written teaching which is just as apostolic and just as authoritative”, but isn’t tradition greatly influenced by culture and man’s influence but one might ask isn’t that the same for the scriptures? - (inspired by God, written by man).
Because we were taught to do things in a certain way, does that make it right? Well apparently so, as the Christian Tradition claims: “That ‘the church has taught’ a particular position, or that ‘many theologians have believed ‘it, or that ‘it has been universally held that’ this thing is true, is regarded as in itself an argument in favour of the position in.....theological work”
There are so many arguments for tradition as an authority (in some cases) over the scriptures, David Benett in his article The Christian Tradition: Living, Holy, and Relevant argue that tradition is unavoidable, he goes further to say that the church would not have survived if it were not for Tradition. This makes me wonder if oral tradition is sometimes confused with story telling. So I tell a friend about a dream I had or something that happened to me in my childhood and she tells her children and the children tell their children’s children and so on does that then become the tradition? What I am trying to say is: The act of telling a story is a tradition but is the story itself a tradition or a narrative?
Of course there are arguments against tradition and scripture and that is in the form of the movement Sola Scriptura which means Scripture alone but surely in the scriptures itself there are a lot of traditions slipped in as it can’t be helped.
Tradition should be a guide which aids us .Christians need tradition as it weren’t there and tradition does I believe help to preserve faith in religion but Scripture stands alone at the head of the tradition. I think Scriptures can just about stand alone but tradition cannot.