FLEMING ISLAND—A popular Clay County holiday event will again come to life thanks to one family’s tradition and a willing church.

“Journey to the Nativity” is a free live-action, walk-through nativity hosted by River Christian Church. It includes music, actors, live animals and more. The event, in its fourth year, had more than 2,300 visitors last year. It gained so much popularity that RCC added a third night this year.

“Journey to the Nativity” will be Friday through Sunday, Dec. 13-15, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., at 5900 U.S. Highway 17.

Carmen Queen and her family are one of three families spearheading the event. Queen’s former church had a " really good nativity,” and their family had traveled to others.

“We wrote down all the things we liked about each one and tried to combine them,” she recalls. “We’d gone to a nativity that had 10,000 people each year go through it, but there was no actual story,” she said. “You just walked through and saw it, so we wanted to be intentional with actually telling the story of Christ’s birth from scripture.”

Preparation for the event started in September by walking the path to clean it up and fix what needed to be repaired. In October, RCC asked church members for help filling numerous volunteer roles, from actors and greeters to golf cart drivers and people to manage refreshments.

Queen also reached out to people with animals so they don’t have to pay for them.

While church staff and ministers participate in the event, volunteers oversee everything. It takes 100 volunteers for each night of RCC’s nativity, and not all volunteers are the same each night. Queen’s 18-year-old daughter, Stephanie, has experienced “Journey to the Nativity” as a visitor and volunteer. “You get to go through and see a whole story,” she said. “It’s just a beautiful event where the community can join together.”

The week of the event is when the final lighting and audio are done. Almost everything is donated.

“The first year somebody told me it was going to cost over $40,000” to stage the event, Queen said. “We’ve built all our sets using donated pallets.”

Tree companies “donate trees they’ve cut down that we can chop into firewood.” RCC has electrical equipment loaned to it, and Publix always donates cookies and water. Community donations toward out-of-pocket costs were between $7,000 and $8,000, mostly for golf carts and light tower rentals.

Queen said another aspect of their nativity is “relational, not only with the community but within our own congregation.”

As an actor, Stephanie Queen said she enjoyed seeing all the different groups come through.

“I saw people that I knew from my childhood I haven’t seen in years, people from school, and a ton of people that I’d never seen before,” she said.

A retired educator, Melissa Morrison believes nativity “is a good outreach – I’ve seen community members attend and then start to attend RCC,” whether they were involved as actors or visitors.

In retelling this timeless story, Queen said RCC also shows its sense of humor by injecting fun into it. “We want to tell the story memorably so people can relate,” she said.

Edwin Crawford, another regular volunteer, said the irony for him and “Journey to the Nativity” is that he “started as a visitor, now I’m a participant.” Crawford has been the nativity’s voice of God for two years.

It’s the relational aspect of RCC’s nativity that Queen is most proud of, which has resulted in repeated visitors and volunteers. It’s about “the repeat people that come every year, whether they attend our church or not,” Queen said.

A nativity was inspired by the Queen’s family tradition, which has now become a tradition for volunteers and visitors alike.