From left, Judy Messing, Carolyn Christian, Suzanne Messing and Chuck Messing talk during a social hour July 28 in the Catholic House.
LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
At top left, a tray of cookies placed out at the Baptist House.
The denominational houses’ simultaneous social hours between 3 and 4:15 p.m. each Tuesday of the Summer Season are a decades-long tradition. The tradition’s origins, including its oodles of cookies, have a somewhat speculative history.
During the 2026 Season, nearly all of the 15 denominational houses at Chautauqua Institution create spreads of snacks and drinks as part of their weekly social hours. House hosts and a weekly rotation of off-grounds congregations often prepare these spreads and organize other components of the respective house’s programming.
Betty Lollis, longtime Chautauquan and former Disciples of Christ House host, and David Lollis, former president of the Chautauqua Denominational Association, have seen the social hour tradition survive and evolve.
David said he believes the concept began as a way for denominational houses that had churches off the grounds to invite their churches onto the grounds without having to purchase a gate pass.
“One of the initial motivations for those ‘Tuesday teas’ was so that they could have local congregations come and bring the food and the drink for the teas at each of the denominational houses,” he said.
David shared that at one point, congregations bringing social hour supplies encountered difficulty getting through the gates.
“All of a sudden, they were coming in the commercial gate, and the person at the gate started giving them a hard time to get in,” he said.
To lessen the potential disruption, he said, congregants started packing everything into one car and offering cookies to front gate attendants.
Since then, Chautauquans have caught wind of the wide array of cookies, and the tradition has grown in popularity. The Episcopal Cottage has regularly counted over 100 “cookie rollers” in social hour attendance each week.
Betty said, “There was always a joke: We called it the people that did the ‘cookie roll’ because they would just go from house to house eating cookies.”
Although they laughed, the Lollises said they welcome the “cookie roll” crowd’s participation, no matter their level of interest in the accompanying programs.
While the social hours all serve the purpose of gathering, there has been a variety between the houses’ Tuesday afternoon activities, according to David.
“Most of them were just events where the people that were at the house that week would have an opportunity, with the team, to get together and meet with some of the people in a church of their denomination close by, and have time together to talk about things and have a social hour together,” he said.
David said some houses began to have formal programs, including a speaker at the Disciples of Christ House — which the Lollises said they directed for 17 years — and a hymnal sing at the Baptist House.
David said while the social hour has persisted, he has seen some changes in this model.
“We’re seeing that there are fewer churches coming in, and sometimes now that the local house has to do all the preparation itself rather than have an outside group come in,” he said, adding that he attributes this to a diminishing number of churches from each denomination.
While he has seen changes, the concept of denominational houses as gathering spaces continues today.
”That’s the model that we hope will survive these changes that are going on in our world today.”
David said the social hours go back long before he became president of the CDA in 2000. In his tenure, he has been in a continual learning process to unearth more information about the tradition.
“I’ve gone to the archives and also to the files in the Department of Religion, and so far, I haven’t been able to find anything that verifies [when they began],” he said.
He said the current co-chairs of the Association of Denominational Houses have been working with the Lollises to search for and record history. In the meantime, David said he has been dedicated to preserving the denominational house history of Chautauqua — even now at age 89. By next year, he hopes to complete an official record of the “cookie roll” and its elusive origins.
If you’d like to learn more about the denominational house social hour “cookie roll,” a video tour led by Religion reporter Lily Reslink and filmed by multimedia journalist Guinevere MacLowry is available on the Daily’s Instagram and Facebook pages.
