It’s Another Christmas Eve and ‘Santa’ Is on the Job

--Every Christmas Eve for the last 15 years, Albert Rosen, humanitarian, has turned into Albert Rosen, bartender. Or Albert Rosen, radio disc jockey, television newscaster, police clerk or gas station attendant. Rosen, a Jew, has volunteered each year to work for a Christian on Christmas Eve so that person could spend the night with his or her family. This year he will work the 4 p.m. to midnight shift at a Denny’s restaurant in Milwaukee for waitress Jill Frank, who is married and has three children. It will be the first time in four years that she will be able to spend Christmas Eve at home. “I just decided I wanted to do something to help my fellow man,” Rosen said of his first Christmas Eve good deed back in 1970. He takes no pay for his work and the people he replaces get their regular salary. Rosen, a semi-retired housewares salesman, said: “I didn’t invent kindness, but I felt there should be more brotherhood in the world.”

--Fidel Castro, in a move that will cheer the American Cancer Society but disturb the Cuban cigar industry, has given up cheroots. “I haven’t lit up a cigar for several months now,” the Cuban president said in an interview on Brazilian television. “I reached the conclusion long ago that the one last sacrifice I must make for (Cuban) public health is to stop smoking. I haven’t really missed it that much.” But two other Castro trademarks--the bushy beard and the military fatigues--will stay. The beard saves time that would be wasted shaving, he said, and the fatigues, well, you never have to worry about what to wear.

--The great moments of television 1985 were named by TV Guide in its fifth annual J. Fred Muggs Awards for gaffes, goofs and absurdities. CBS anchorman Dan Rather was selected for his quick thinking in using pages from his news script to extinguish a fire in a technician’s pants minutes before he was to read the news on the air. NBC White House correspondent Robin Lloyd won the Sam Donaldson Prize for Combative Reporting for “trying to cross a police barricade at a hotel where President Reagan was speaking.” Lloyd was arrested.