One obscure poem of Emily Dickinson that helps provide a description of the feeling invoked by a modern Thanksgiving is “One Day is there of the Series”. It is sometimes interpreted as an allusion to the detachment from tradition and the awkwardness felt by that distance.
The poem is listed below so that you can draw your own conclusions.
One Day is there of the Series
One Day is there of the series
Termed “Thanksgiving Day” –
Celebrated part at Table
Part in Memory –
Neither Ancestor nor Urchin
I dissect the Play –
Seems it to my Hooded thinking
Reflex Holiday –
Had there been no sharp Subtraction
From the early Sum –
Not an Acre or a Caption
Where was once a Room
Not a mention whose small Pebble
Wrinkled any Sea,
Unto such, were such Assembly
‘Twere “Thanksgiving Day” –
