When an ambitious businessman gets in a scuffle with a ref at his son's basketball game, he is suspended from his job and sentenced to community service; manning a red kettle and ringing bells for the Salvation Army for the rest of the Christmas season. At first he finds this humiliating, and in his self-pity determines to be the world's worst bell ringer, but as he encounters the people behind the kettle, his life and especially his relationship with his son, is changed by something as simple as ringing a bell.