Let’s all appreciate our blessings while the holiday season lasts

You’re probably familiar with the handbell,which looks for all the world like a miniature Liberty bell jabbed with a popsicle stick.

If you ring just one, it’s not much to brag about. If you hand various handbells to young children, you’ll wind up with a headache from the stifling clatter. But take these same bells, add organization and music, and the sound is so sweet and melodious and pure that it’s almost enough to make me cry.

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How can something so ordinary as a handbell, particularly something that sounds so painful in the wrong hands, produce a sound so simple and unifying in the right ones?

How much more enlightening would a church service be if a bell choir that plays only very occasionally played its heart out every Sunday – how much more meaning could we get from a church service that way?

I was thinking about this the other day when one of my sons commented wistfully that it sure would be great if the holiday season lasted all year long. He’s right, of course: It would be great if that feeling of goodwill and peace toward others, so fleeting during the holidays, was with us 365 days a year.

It’s an even more appealing thought given that the past few years, all in all, have been pretty sour experience; a whole lot of people seem to be itching for a fight with someone, though even they aren’t quite sure who. Ever since the trade towers collapsed, we’ve been dealing with the sound of bell-players-gone-crazy throughout the world, and that feeling has trickled all the way down to our neighborhoods.

The scraps over McMansions, the constant grumbling about city priorities, the tiring arguments about appraised values and tax rates, the constant drumbeat trashing public schools, the bloated gas prices – overall, we’re not happy campers.

Unfortunately, we aren’t going to solve our problems by handing everyone a handbell and ordering them to ring it in harmony. It would be nice if things were that simple, if we could simply “will” the world to become a friendlier place, starting with our own neighborhood, if we could all be on the same page all of the time.

But I suspect we would eventually find fault even with the never-ending but lovely melodies of a handbell choir, just as a never-ending holiday season would eventually lose its ability to make us stop and appreciate our blessings.

The only way to wind up happy and peaceful and calm would be when we’re all harmonizing together from the same sheet music. And we’re just going to have to get used to the idea that despite our best efforts, that’s only going to happen very, very occasionally.

Which is probably why the very occasional handbell choir on Sunday morning, just like the holiday season itself, continues to pack a punch.