It began looking a lot like Christmas around Dorothy Kinard’s Champaign home before many folks had thought about taking down their Halloween decorations. Kinard, an account technician at the Small Animal Clinic, spends about a week decorating her home for the holiday season, erecting 10 artificial trees that she adorns thematically with hundreds of ornaments. Black angels swarm a small tree in Kinard’s sitting room, while in her living room hand-blown glass Polonaise ornaments shimmer on one 7 1/2-foot tree in the front window, and, across the room, Kinard’s “mother’s tree” is lovingly adorned with vintage ornaments that belonged to Kinard’s late mother. Faux pine swags and sprays dress the tops of furniture and doorways and faux vines bearing bright-red berries meander around the bathroom walls. Also sprinkled among the hurricane lamps and other antique furnishings in Kinard’s home are scenes that Kinard constructs using the 50 buildings and 300 accessories from her collection of Department 56 Dickens Village pieces.
Have you always been a Christmas fanatic?
I always had a tree but I wasn’t a big decorator until I started working in the Holiday Shop at Bergner’s department store. I worked there part-time in housewares and in the seasonal Holiday Shop before I worked at the university. I used to decorate eight or nine trees in the store with different themes, and customers would ask me to decorate trees in their homes, which I did a few times, or they’d ask me how to decorate their trees and I’d tell them. I also began collecting the Department 56 pieces then. I like the Victorian-looking buildings.
If there’s a Christmas movie marathon on TV, I’ll watch every one. The original “Miracle on 34th Street” with Natalie Wood is my favorite.
The thing I enjoy most is the reason for the season. I drive a van for Calvary Baptist Church in Urbana and pick up kids ranging from age 4 to teenagers to take them to church every Sunday. I have a daughter of my own, who’s grown, and have “adopted” many more.
Do you have help with decorating your house?
I do all the decorating in my house by myself because I wouldn’t trust someone else to do it. When I’m putting things out, I’m laughing and enjoying myself. All the decorations come down the day after Christmas.
Do you have a favorite ornament?
My favorites are the Polonaise ornaments of Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories and Raggedy Ann and Andy. My grandmother used to call me Raggedy Ann, and I love to watch Sherlock Holmes movies.
One year, I broke the Dr. Watson ornament and when I told people at work, everybody tried to find me a replacement. A friend found one on eBay. Every Christmas, something good comes to me.
Are there any ornaments or decorations you don’t have that you’d like to get?
I’m thinking about buying a new tree this year. I want to get a white tree and decorate it in red, then I will start buying decorations for my basement. I think I’m going to have about 4-6 trees for the basement next year.
Tell me about your career at the university.
This is my 11th year at the UI. I started out as extra help working in Henry Administration Building. After about a year and a half, I got a job at the Small Animal Clinic and have been there since. I have a variety of accounting responsibilities, order office and basic medical supplies, order phones and other things.
It’s the people that make the clinic a friendly, fun place to work. We treat each other like family and enjoy each other’s company. We’ve had many good times.
A visiting researcher’s snake escaped in the clinic one day, and when I found out, I went home for the day. When I came back the next day, I took this big stick with me everywhere I went. My co-workers later played an April Fool’s Day joke on me and put a rubber snake in the bathroom. I saw it and came out screaming. That was about 4 1/2 years ago, and I have never been back in that particular bathroom.
Aside from holiday decorating, what hobbies do you have?
Going to estate sales with my cousin and my surrogate mother and collecting antiques with a passion. It’s truly a joy.
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