I had hoped to be scared this Halloween by maybe taking a creepy clown up on his offer to hug me in what looks like a setting out of some Masterpiece murder mystery.

Of course clowns like mimes are creepy even if they don’t touch. But Googling Halloween and education, I need not have feared. Scary stuff is easily findable. One article in the Belvoire Eagle, come to think of it, its logo looks like some Harry Potter bird, has the headline of “Religious Education Center Fall Festival Provides Alternative Halloween.”

The good director of the Belvoir Center says, “Non-scary costumes are encouraged,” and he is quoted as saying “Halloween can become a monster worship or who can we scare the most kind of thing.”

I ask, are we missing something here about Halloween? I need not have worried, because we really are missing something about Halloween. Despite the cool-sounding title, “Heroes Unmasked,” kids will come dressed up as biblical figures and the focus will be on Daniel, David, Esther, Moses, and others.

So what I am reading is that kids will come to associate Halloween with good people out of the Bible. To me, that’s kind of scary. In fact, it’s double scary: this is also one example of education needing to take a rest for one day.