December 26, 1981

It was not a white Christmas, to be sure, dulled as it was to a sort of coastal, oyster gray. But in certain spots of the city, something shimmered, if only briefly. For many, the day was bright. ''It's spiritually beautiful,'' said Lascell Johnson as he sat down to a chicken dinner prepared by the Salvation Army and served to more than 400 people on West 125th Street.

Some Republicans who generally support President Reagan are opposing the Administration's efforts to dismantle the 19-month-old Department of Education. After meetings with key legislators over the last two weeks, Education Secretary T.H. Bell expressed hope that his plan to make the department a ''foundation'' below Cabinet rank will be approved by Congress next spring and take effect Oct. 1, 1982. Nevertheless, he conceded that ''we're going to have a tough fight,'' largely because it is opposed by such Republicans as Senator William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which handles reorganization bills. ''Senator Roth was as nice as he can be,'' Mr. Bell said in an interview. ''He just told me that he had worked hard for the department and couldn't understand why I wanted to do what I wanted to do.''

The Soviet Union today published the most comprehensive charges to date that events in Poland over the last 17 months were part of a long and intricate campaign by the United States to wrest Poland from the Communist camp. Western diplomats asserted that the 3,600-word Pravda article by Vladimir Bolshakov was less remarkable for the substance of its claims than for what it revealed about the Kremlin's insecurity and suspicion. Mr. Bolshakov described virtually every Polish emigre organization, thousands of Polish-Americans who returned to retire in Poland, all the supplies and donations sent to Solidarity and virtually every contact between the labor union and the West as part of a web spun by the United States Central Intelligence Agency ''to undermine the socialist statehood and to create conditions for a counterrevolutionary coup.'' (Asked to comment on the Pravda article, Mark D. Weinberg, the assistant White House press secretary, said in Washington: ''Charges similar to these have been made in the past. There was no truth to them then and there is no truth to them now.'')

Defense Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published today that the strategic cooperation agreement between the United States and Israel still ''formally'' existed. Prime Minister Menachem Begin said earlier this week that he felt the United States had canceled the agreement by announcing a suspension of talks to carry out the pact. The United States canceled the talks after Israel annexed the Golan Heights in a surprise move. In the interview, published today in the newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, Mr. Sharon said the Golan annexation had been prompted by an American plan to force Israel to return all land it conquered in the 1967 Middle East war. He said termination of the strategic agreement required six months' notice.

At age 41, Paul Hanson is used to making what he calls ''great money'' as a pipe designer. But in October, he was laid off by the Manhattan engineering company he had been working for, and his situation has become grim. ''My business is very slow,'' he said. ''Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania - they're all way down for engineering. They're just not hiring.'' With a wife and three children to support, Mr. Hanson is worried. He has used up his savings and money borrowed from relatives, but that, too, is running out.