"I'd sooner toast my imminent death by tetanus," MacHenery said.
"I'd like to taste this stuff," Winfree said. "Let's compromise. Can we drink to Peggy?"
"Accepted," MacHenery said, raising his glass. "To my Peggy—our Peggy." He gave the whiskey the concentration it deserved. Then, "You know, Wesley," he said, "if you weren't in the BSG I could like you real well. I'd rejoice at your becoming my son-in-law. Too bad that you wear the enemy uniform."
"The BSG is hardly an enemy," Winfree said. "It's been an American institution for a long time. This is excellent whiskey."
"We'll test a second sample, to see whether its quality stands up through the bottle," MacHenery suggested. "For all we know, they may be putting the best on top." He poured them each another. "Yes, Wesley, the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities has been with the American consumer quite a while. Twenty years it'll be, come next Potlatch Day. You were brought up in the foul tradition, Wes. You don't know what our country was like in the good old days, when Christmas was spelled with a C instead of an X."
"I know that a paltry twenty billion dollars a year were spent on Xmas—sorry, sir—on Christmas Gratuities, back before my Bureau came on the scene to triple that figure, to bring us all greater prosperity."
"Your Bureau brought us the stink of burning," MacHenery said. "It brought us the Potlatch Pyres."
"Yes, Potlatch!" Captain Winfree said. "Potlatch Pyres and Potlatch Day—childhood's brightest memory. Ah, those smells from the fire! The incense of seared varnish; the piny smoke from building-blocks tossed into the flames; the thick wool stinks of dated shirts and cowboy-suits, gasoline-soaked and tossed into the Potlatch Pyre. My little brother, padded fat in his snowsuit, toddling up to the fire to toss in his dated sled, then scampering back from the sparks while Mom and Dad smiled at him from the porch, cuddling hot cups of holiday ponchero in their hands."
"Seduction of the innocents," MacHenery said. "Training the babes to be wastrels."