JACKSONVILLE, Fla — It's a big day for families in Duval County -- even if the kids don't know it yet.
On Thursday parents of families participating in Salvation Army's Angel Tree program pick up their gifts to put under the tree for their children. The old JCPenney at Regency Square Mall is filled with boxes to provide Christmas presents to nearly 2,000 children in Duval County.
Employees with JEA volunteered Wednesday to put together bicycles for kids. For employee Michael Hinson, it's an ode to the childhood feeling he got when he received a bike for Christmas.
"That was a feeling I'll never forget when I was a kid," Hinson said. "For some reason it's just stuck with me all of these years and every time I put one of these together it's stuck with me."
The feeling Major Candice Biggers with Salvation Army of Northeast Florida will never forget is getting Christmas presents from Angel Tree when she was a child.
"If it hadn't been for the Angel Tree and the Salvation Army, my family wouldn't have had Christmas many years ago," Biggers said.
Biggers says she's come full circle, becoming a major with Salvation Army because of the year the Angel Tree program brought Christmas to her family of 14 in West Virginia.
"My father was on a strike, coal miners' strike, and it was over two years," she said. "Now I get to see the faces of the mothers coming in to get the gifts for their children. I know some have relocated here because they had no home, like in Ukraine. So being able to make their Christmas a happy one, there's not a feeling that I could even explain."
Major Keath Biggers says they need volunteers to ring their red kettle bells. Learn how volunteer here.