It's the season of festive meals and family feasts. WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk is asking you to share stories behind favorite family recipes and the memories they hold for you. We talked to Zach Rothman-Hicks as part of a collaboration with the Queens Memory Project. Rothman-Hicks lives in Queens.

The transcript of Zach Rothman-Hicks' story has been lightly edited for clarity.

Zach Rothman-Hicks:

I'm 40 years old. I can't believe I'm that old, and I live in Queens, New York. I'm from Manhattan.  You know, it's funny, my parents cook a lot, and they cook a lot of different types of recipes. But for me, if I think of like the holidays, a recipe that like really sticks out to me is sugar cookies. So, even though they're relatively simple to make, my dad will always make them from scratch.

He usually asks me, and I try each year to help out, at least with the cutting and the decoration part of it. I always think of the different shapes and the colors and like getting them all ready and then having them at some point around the holidays. It sticks out because there's just like that level of thoughtfulness, but it's also like really fun to be able to take the time, like with my dad and with my sister if she's helping out with it, and just sort of like be together and make something for everybody.

We set aside a couple hours for the rolling the dough and all the shapes and all the decoration. My father learned about all of the baking from his mother. So my grandmother is really who I have to thank for, like, the recipe, but also the tradition of it. She would make so many different, like, cookies until she wasn't able to when she had dementia and couldn't cook anymore, and my dad kind of took over as It's the cook, so I think for him it's really important also because the recipes are passed down from her, and they're handwritten on these index cards. I think it's an important part of like passing down memories of her.