Every Thanksgiving, more than 50 people gather at my mom’s house. We’ve been doing it for decades. It’s loud, crowded, full of food, family, laughter and all the chaos that comes with generations of people celebrating under one roof.
But last Thanksgiving was different.
Everyone knows how to play mahjong now.
We had little kids, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college kids, young adults, husbands, moms with babies crying, aunts and grandmothers all wanting to play. We started with one mahjong table.
We quickly needed two.
And then Thanksgiving basically turned into a loud, clacking tile casino.
Mahjong moved from my mom’s office to the dining room to the kitchen table. Multiple games were going at once. People rotated in and out, refilled drinks, watched hands, talked across tables and waited for their turn to play.
And there was so much laughter.
Standing there watching generations of our family gathered around those tables was one of those moments that reminds you why traditions matter. It was also a reminder of exactly why we started HipHipMahjong!
Mahjong gave everyone a reason to sit down together.
Not just people the same age. Not just the usual four friends who play every week. Kids were playing with adults. College students were sitting across from grandmothers. Husbands were jumping into games. Someone was always waiting for the next seat to open.
It wasn’t really about the game anymore.
It was about being together.
And somewhere in the middle of all that Thanksgiving mahjong chaos, So Bam Grateful was born.
We knew instantly that we had to design Thanksgiving mahjong tiles.
A Thanksgiving Mahjong Set With a Purpose
We love beautiful mahjong tiles, but we especially love creating sets that have a reason to come out year after year.
Holiday mahjong does that.
You pull out the Christmas set and know Christmas is coming. Halloween mahjong becomes part of October. And now, our So Bam Grateful Thanksgiving mahjong set has a reason to return to the table every fall.
It becomes part of the tradition.
That is what inspired us to create Thanksgiving mahjong tiles specifically for this holiday. We wanted a fall mahjong set that felt like Thanksgiving, family and gathering around the table.
Because the best part of a themed mahjong set isn’t just what’s painted on the tiles.
It’s what happens around them.
Our New Thanksgiving Tradition
This Thanksgiving, I already know what will happen.
There will be more than 50 of us again. There will be too much food, drinks being refilled, people talking over one another and probably babies crying somewhere in the background.
And there will definitely be more than one mahjong table.
This time, we’ll have So Bam Grateful on the table, the Thanksgiving mahjong tiles that were literally inspired by our family gathering the year before.
Maybe years from now, nobody will remember exactly who won those games.
But we’ll remember the sound of the tiles clacking across multiple tables. We’ll remember who taught whom. We’ll remember squeezing in another chair. We’ll remember the laughter.
Those are the moments.
That’s why we create holiday mahjong sets.
That’s why we created Thanksgiving mahjong tiles.
And that’s why we are So Bam Grateful.