Autumn purists are everyone’s heroes come September. Pumpkin this and apple that and spices and yellows, oranges, reds and browns begin popping up while temperatures still hover around triple digits. At the close of Labor Day autumn appreciation explodes everywhere, including my house.

An entire day. That’s how long it takes to decorate my house for fall. And come November first I add the Thanksgiving decorations to the mix.

Here’s the problem. Autumn, so beloved at the end of summer, gets kicked to the curb before the Halloween candy is passed out. Christmas has been hovering around the edges of autumn for two months now and at the stroke of midnight on October 31st it springs full blown to coat the nation in red and green, holly and berries and silver bells.

The ramifications for autumn purists are manifold. And not the least of these is the dearth of autumn colored candy. My pumpkin jar stays out till Thanksgiving but no red or green candies will ever see the inside of it. The problem is getting hold of appropriately-colored candy after Halloween. So I stock up as soon as the Autumn Mix and gold, red, orange and brown M&M’s hit the shelves because they’ll be gone faster than the carved pumpkins on your front porch.

It all looks lovely, doesn’t it? But here’s that fly in the ointment. I don’t understand the silver kisses. Do they fit in with the warm colors of fall? They do not. I try to bury them in the middle of the jar or convince family members to only eat the silver-wrapped kisses. But some always worm their ways to the visible outer portions and MESS with my autumnal color scheme.

I’m thinking of starting a campaign to convince the Hershey’s Kiss folks to Save the Silver for Christmas. Want to join my cause? That’ll earn you a kiss.