A DECORATIVE BELL that hang from the Christmas tree was once very confused about whether it was night or day, as sunlight barely ever reached the branch from which he hanged. Having lost all sense of time, the bell would ring in the middle of the night and wake everyone up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really mean to!”, the bell would say after realizing it was not yet the time. Needless to say, they all lost their sleep and didn’t exchange a word with him throughout the day.

One day, a decorative Christmas ball that was sitting right next to him happened to ask: “How do you know what time it is before you ring?”.

“It’s simple!”, the bell exclaimed. “I just listen to my biological clock”. The ball found the answer rather strange as she had never heard of the existence of such a clock before. She, then, thought of asking the other bells that rang only during regular hours and never bothered anyone.  “What he means, is that he rings whenever he feels like it”, they all answered and burst into laughter. Yet the ball was still not satisfied with the answer. So, she thought of asking the cuckoo  that was rumored to be very wise and that came out of the mechanical clock on the wall at specific times a day.

“My good cuckoo, the bell that sits next to me rings completely out of the blue and wakes me up at wrong times. What can I do?”, the ball asked.

“As the bell is hidden behind the tree and never gets to see the morning sunlight, he can’t tell day and night. As soon as you wake up tomorrow morning, open the window shutters and push him to the light”, the cuckoo replied.

So it happened. The next day, and as soon as the ball saw the sunlight coming through the window shutter, she opened it wide. She then moved the bell to the sunlight. After waking up, he gave a loud ring to notify everyone.

When the other bells and Christmas ornaments heard it, they burst into applause. “You finally woke up on time!”, they exclaimed. Since that time, he only wakes up in the morning and sleeps during nights, never to bother anyone again.