After my family moved to the suburbs, when I was 10, my mother used to take us to a huge creche that was performed by live actors, narrated over a PA system. It was at a church located on El Camino Real in Burlingame and it was made somewhat more mysterious by the huge eucalyptus trees that lined El Camino Real through Burlingame. There must have been some sort of schedule for the performances, or perhaps due to the brevity of the performances -- 10 minutes, if I recall correctly -- they were continuous.
There were neighborhoods in San Francisco that would coordinate on Christmas themes to which each house would adhere. These would attract enormous flows of car and pedestrian traffic to look at the displays. I don't know when they took down everything, though.
We haven't done anything for christmas since the Aughts. That last time was celebrated by the destruction of a tree our neighbors had planted to obscure our view across the Monterey Bay. After their little display of unneighborliness, they had decided to default on their mortgage (they had a second home) rather than try to sell their home; their former home was empty for about 8 months after until their lender could sell it. So my husband took a large pruning saw and demolished the tree, and pulling it around to serve as our Xmas tree.
