Christmas Hand Bell Songs- A Family Holiday Tradition

November 9, 2017

Looking for a fun and musical family Christmas tradition to start? Learn to play Christmas songs with hand bells!

A Fun Family Christmas Activity

A few years ago, my friend brought some hand bells and music sheets to our 3rd Advent Talent Night. (Don’t know what advent night is? It’s one of our all time favorite Christmas traditions because it helps us slow down and focus on what’s important!) Our memorable Advent Night ended with our entire group singing Christmas songs while playing hand bells. It was spiritual, fun, and definitely brought the Christmas spirit.

And that’s when we became hooked with hand bells! You see, I’m not one with great musical talent. But hand bells, that I can do!

In fact…

Anyone can play the hand bells, unless you are color blind, I suppose.

That memorable advent night sparked a desire in me to invest in my own set of hand bells so that I could carry on this fun Christmas tradition with my own little family. As our children grow older, I love that they will be able to participate in playing Christmas songs well before they develop great musical abilities.

Inexpensive Hand bell Set

When I started looking into hand bell sets, I was surprised to see so many options out there.

You can go with a full spectrum of notes such as one like this:

20-Note Complete Chromatic Handbell Set

or a slightly-smaller version such as this one:

13-Note Complete Chromatic C-c Handbell Set

I knew that for our purposes of playing Hand bells at Christmas time and the occasional preschool group or music time throughout the year, a simple 8-note set would do just fine. As in, we weren’t going to become famous Hand Bell choirs any time soon.

So I found this Hand bell set on Amazon and after a few years of use, I’m still very satisfied with our investment:

8 Note Diatonic Metal Hand Bell Set

Why I liked this set:

The hand bells are metal
There are no repeat colors used. Some sets have 2 different reds instead of white, and I thought that would be too confusing!
It’s affordable!

Christmas Hand bell Music

Once I got our Hand Bell set the next step was to create posters with all the Christmas songs we would want to play.

Our first Advent Night, my husband and I were hand coloring circles on large posters literally minutes before our Sing-a-long started. And then we ran out of space and we messed up on colors, so that first night didn’t go as smooth.

I knew there had to be a better way

So I started searching for Christmas Hand Bell music online and couldn’t find any song sheets that were already made, simple to read and follow, or that matched with the colors used on my hand bells. And the few options I did find were expensive to invest in.

I figured I could make our own!

After years of working on these Christmas Hand bell song sheets, they are finally where I want them to be!

I’m so excited to be able to share them with you who are in my same predicament.

Here’s what they look like!

Unlike other song sheets out there, these ones include:

Color-coded notes above each word/syllable.
The note is also listed in case your hand bell set uses different colors or you want to play along on a different instrument.
The text is large! And the lyrics are included.
The printables can be printed in poster size (24 x 36) or letter size (8.5 x 11), depending on what you need them for.