This Thursday is Thanksgiving, a national holiday in the United States ever since Abraham Lincoln declared it one in 1863.

Many history experts will tell you that Thanksgiving’s association with a 1621 harvest feast in Massachusetts is somewhat mythical.

And every year a legion of Captains of Obviousness also point out that images of Pilgrims and Wampanoags peacefully sharing a table full of gourds is misleading because — get ready for a shocker — Europeans and Native Americans did not always get along that well. Also, no one likes gourds.

It is for this reason that American families pay an annual homage to the truth behind the legend by not getting along that well themselves.

Nonetheless, Thanksgiving is a good holiday, or at least it can be. It’s not as noisy as the 4th of July, dentally destructive as Halloween, or as crassly materialistic as next weekend’s other notable occasion, Black Friday.

On Black Friday, Americans selfishly gorge themselves on electronic consumer goods made in China and Korea.

On Thanksgiving, by contrast, Americans gorge themselves on food that is relatively wholesome. They also, at least for a per-family average of 18.5 seconds, actually give thanks for the genuinely good things in their lives.

Giving thanks is a healthy, positive human activity. We give thanks for excellent things, such as being alive, having a roof over our heads and having a handful of family members who — while often irritating — nonetheless mitigate the horrible empty despair of being alone in a pitiless and meaningless universe.

In addition to being thankful for all these things, college students this Thursday might also take a moment to thank their professors.

In case you haven’t been to class much lately, professors are the sometimes intelligent, sometimes absurd, sometimes boring people who stand at the front of the class and talk about something.

Professors — a few dastardly exceptions notwithstanding — work hard, know lots and lots about their fields and really do care about their students. Most of them, in fact are genuinely thankful for the chance to be a part of your life. So thank your professors, but don’t simply do it by saying thank you. There is a better way.

You may remember a long document they handed you on the first day of class; it looked about as exciting as the Facebook Terms and Conditions, and you paid about the same level of attention to it.

It’s called the syllabus.

It’s filled with all sorts of bureaucratic boilerplates that administrators make us include, but if you can figure out how to get past that, you might find some really interesting other stuff. Stuff like where and when our office hours are. Stuff like our policies on grading and late assignments. Maybe even cooler stuff, like what the course is about and what we hope you learn in it!

Above all, we put a lot of time into these documents and it hurts our feelings when they go unappreciated. So really read the syllabus – nay, more than that, know the syllabus, live the syllabus, love the syllabus.

We will be so thankful – as thankful as a Wampanoag given the chance to feed a Pilgrim in 1621.