Thanksgiving is still a month away, but it’s already begun.

I’m not talking about the shopping or the cooking.

It’s the Thanksgiving shuffle.

In families across America everyone is jockeying for position. High-level negotiations are ongoing about where they will enjoy the Thanksgiving turkey. Of course, “enjoy” might be a strong word for some families, or am I just projecting about my day?

Who will host and cook? Who will travel and who won’t? What time will dinner be? Who wants to go to a restaurant? Can we rearrange the usual dinner time? Who wants to rush dinner to go to a movie? (That would be my uncle.)

Some people keep mum, hoping someone else in their family will step up and offer to cook. Others fight over the right.

There are couples and families who spend half the day on the road going from one house to another to make everyone happy.

Others negotiate arrangements for the Christmas holiday to get what they want for Thanksgiving.

It was July when one woman I know announced to her siblings that she was going to Pennsylvania with her family to have Thanksgiving with friends. She made a clear break when no one was yet interested in debating the issue. What a brilliant strategy!

I know a family that lets an 85-year-old mother cook even though it’s too much for her. But it’s the only day (actually two days) of the year that one son will visit from his home in another part of the country. He only wants his mother’s house and food, so she lobbies to have everyone at her table. Hurt feelings are all part of the mix.

I start getting calls in September from people desperate to book a reservation at one of the few restaurants that will serve Thanksgiving dinner. Some tell me they just can’t handle the cooking or the clean up anymore and they don’t want to disappoint their kids, who are going on 60 years old.

It seems many people give thanks by worrying.

My sister and I take turns having our brother and his family and our parents for Thanksgiving. One year it’s at my house and I cook, another it’s at her house — and I cook. I’m at peace with all of it. Such serenity was a long time coming, with the push and pulls of other extended family adding drama to the plans for so many years.

Now there’s a new generation getting into the act to upset the well-arranged apple cart.

“You don’t care if I don’t get home until Thanksgiving afternoon do you?” asked my son in a phone call.

It seems he wants to go straight from his college dorm to a concert in New York Wednesday night.

I didn’t rant or rave or act all hurt like my mother always behaved in such moments.

I let my husband do it.

gciampa@projo.com