It started with a star, reports Katie Lauer for the Bay Area News Group. Sundar Shadi, a Sikh immigrant from India, wanted to thank his Christian neighbors for welcoming his family to America, so he hung a wooden star outside his house on Christmas morning in 1949.
In later years, he crafted "sheep, shepherds, camels, donkeys, wise men, villagers, hookah-smoking travelers and a mannequin angel" in a miniature Bethlehem on a hillside next to his home in El Cerrito, California.
Shadi died in 2002, a month before his 102nd birthday. Community volunteers stepped in to preserve the tradition. To prepare for the 75th anniversary, local folk artists helped restore "more than 500 handmade elements that make up the multi-faith motifs," writes Lauer. "Almost everything Shadi made will be on display."
"The Wise Men donned new robes and turbans that were crafted from scraps of colorful cloth, replacing garments previously made out of plastic tablecloths and tinsel garland," she writes. "Camels wore custom-made harnesses, measured and crafted by a local leatherworker in place of the reins refashioned out of leather belts; the display’s five dozen sheep finally looked like they belonged to the same flock, after volunteers repainted over mismatched eyes and chipped plaster wool."