When I reviewed which writing prompts and questions have been the most popular, the ones where I asked you to use your five senses to describe a setting have been by far the most viewed.

So I’m giving those prompts a holiday twist and asking you to use the five senses to describe your favorite Christmas decoration. My favorite is my mantel. I love pulling together a variety of decorations to make what is basically a work of art.

So here’s my list of some of the many things I put on display, using my five senses.

• SIGHT: A lot to work with here. The garland is, surprisingly, pine green. The lights in the garland are multicolored. Red candles. Transparent hurricane shades. Many shades of red from Santa Claus’s coat to the ribbon on Rudolph’s neck. A color photo. A pencil sketch. Dull brown of the iron stocking hangers.
• TASTE and SMELL: Nothing for those senses, unless my garland was made of real pine.
• TOUCH: Another bonanza of sensations. The iron stocking hangers were cold when I got them out of the bin in the basement. Smooth hurricane shades and candles. Soft fur or cloth. Smooth plastic bricks. Bumpy, cool plaster figurines. Smooth glass or porcelain. Feathery fake birds.
• HEARING: Not much for this sense except the crackles, crunches, and squeaks as different materials rub against the garland. Although I did find out that Rudolph is musical. I pressed a spot on him, and his song came out in a static-y, off-key way, like the battery is just starting to lose power.

So how could I works these sensations into a description? Read on!

“I need someone to decorate the mantel,” my boss Sandra said. “The box for it is …”

“I’ll do it!” I raised my hand.

The mantel in the old house that was now an antique store sat above a fireplace in what must have been the parlor a hundred years ago. And the man who’d visited us five times in five days without buying anything was hanging around in there again.

“The box is in the basement,” said Sandra.

Not my favorite place in the old house with its rickety steps, stone walls, and smell of dead air, but I got the box and spread the prickly fake garland on the mantel.

The man, maybe forty, was frowning at a roll top desk.

I placed a smooth hurricane shade on the mantel.

He moved over to a wall covered in paintings and photographs with more stacked against the wall on the floor.

What did he find so interesting in this room?

The antique iron stocking holders chilled my hands as I spaced them on the mantel.

Now he was examining a velvet settee.

As I nestled the smooth, glass blown ornaments in the garland, the man seemed fascinated with every object in the room. No, not quite. He didn’t look at anything in the center of the room. Just the items set against the walls.

The man appeared to look at each of the paintings leaning against each other. But he actually seemed more interested in the wall behind them.

I lifted a Santa doll to the mantel and then lowered it.

Was the man more interested in the room than the antiques? But why?

Here are more Christmas writing prompts.