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."

"We loved it," Winfree insisted. "True, the little girls might cry as
they handed a dated doll to the BSG-man; while he prepared it for suttee
with a wash of gasoline and set it into the fire; but little girls, as I
suppose you know, relish occasions for weeping. They cheered up mighty
quick, believe me, when the thermite grenades were set off, filling the
night air with the electric smell of molten metal, burning dated clocks
and desk-lamps, radios and humidors, shoes and ships and carving-sets;
burning them down to smoke and golden-glowing puddles under the ashes of
the Potlatch Pyre. Then the fireworks, Mr. MacHenery. The fireworks! The
BSG-man touching a flaming torch to the fuses of the mortars; a sizzle
and a burst; the Japanese star-shells splitting the sky, splashing
across the night's ceiling, scattering from their pods, blossoming into
Queen Anne's Lace in a dozen colors of fire."

"Fire and destru