January 17, 2021: A Whole Lot's in a Name

“Epiphany Insurrection” is the term the Episcopal Public Policy Network has chosen for the Trump-inspired riots of January 6th.  Technically true: as Epiphany is (in many traditions) January 6, and “insurrection” is accurate.

 But I just don’t think it’s going to catch on – it’s both too arcane and too provincial. Most people don’t know or care from Epiphany, or just think of the word in a non-date, ‘realization’ sense. And even among those who think of it as being a particular day on the liturgical calendar, there are disagreements about which day. In part of the Orthodox world, January 6 is Christmas Eve, and Epiphany is January 19th. So I’m voting Thumbs-Down on Epiphany Insurrection, though I do respect the work that went into that idea.

“Wednesday” is how my congressman, Earl Blumenauer, is referring to the same event. He’s not wrong, but already he’s run into trouble, as subsequent Wednesdays pile up. And I don’t want the coming Wednesday to be the same sort of Wednesday as the one we had on January 6.

The Department of Defense issued a memo calling the event “the January 6, 2021 First Amendment Protests.”  

This will not do at all.

I will give them “January 6.”

But “First Amendment,” no. I won’t even give them Second Amendment, though some wag might want to suggest that one. Sit down, wag. Too soon. .

Turns out the Defense Dept verbiage wasn’t as nefarious a euphemism as it looked. They were using language that Muriel Bowser, Mayor of D.C., put in a letter dated December 31, when she described the upcoming event as “First Amendment demonstrations permitted by the National Park Service.” Fair enough. Who knew on December 31 that it would be armed insurrection and lead to multiple deaths? Okay, so maybe a lot of people knew, or suspected, but you can see Mayor Bowser’s before-the-fact point.

Still.  We need a name, people. We could go with the “9/11” naming convention, and just call it “1/6,” but it’s not very punchy. We can do better.

Over to you.