December 18, 1985

THE holiday season calls for a little glitter and glamour in dress, home decorating, entertaining and cooking. Indeed, the spirit of the season may inspire home cooks to attempt a festive dish that they have been meaning to make but have rarely had the opportunity or courage to confront. Such show-stoppers, though, need not be so laborious that they anchor the cook to the kitchen for hours. Nor must they be so risky as to find a host or hostess frantically calling a local Chinese carryout shop as the guests begin to arrive. Consider the centerpiece dishes described below: roast suckling pig with a sage-flavored apple stuffing, crown roast of pork stuffed with a spicy rice and sausage combination, and butterflied loin of lamb rolled around a mixture of spinach, pine nuts and mushrooms. The butcher can do the hard work: The pig can be ordered cleaned and ready for roasting; ask for the loin of lamb deboned and butterflied; the crown roast can be purchased already assembled. Only the creative part is left up to you - the stuffings, garnishes and side dishes.

International Secretary of State George P. Shultz reacted angrily on the issue of terrorism during a visit to Belgrade after the Yugoslav Foreign Minister had commented about the October hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, in which an American was killed. Foreign Minister Raid Dizdarevic had said at a news conference that, although Yugoslavia condemned terrorism, ''one must also view the causes that lead to it.'' Mr. Shultz pounded the table and said, ''There must be no place to hide for people who do that kind of thing.'' [Page A1, Column 3.] The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko again took the mantle of rebel and critic to demand that the candor and openness of which Mikhail S. Gorbachev has spoken be applied to Russian literature. At a congress of Russian writers in Moscow he called for the lifting of some of the most sensitive taboos of Soviet culture. [A1:1.]

Latin America's leading debtor nations today proposed a set of ''emergency measures,'' including new loans and the reduction of interest rates, to permit a resumption of economic growth in the region. At the same time, they warned that, without relief from current interest payments, they might be forced to limit the transfer of resources abroad in order to avert social and political instability. The decisions came at the end of a two-day conference of foreign and finance ministers of the 11-nation Cartagena Group, called together to prepare a response to a recent United States debt initiative known as the Baker Plan.

Just five years ago, Francisco Villagran Kramer resigned his post as Vice President of Guatemala and fled the country. ''Death or exile is the fate of those who fight for justice in Guatemala,'' he said at the time. Today, Mr. Villagran's apartment in the capital is a gathering place for young activists eager to discuss what the future holds for Guatemalan democracy. He himself is said to be a possible candidate to head the Supreme Court. The military has run Guatemala for more than 30 years, and during that period Guatemalans have suffered some of the harshest repression in Latin America. Tens of thousands of people, many of them Indians descended from Mayan tribes, have died violently. During some periods, street-corner killings of students, businessmen, political organizers, university professors and trade unionists were common.

A Washington dispatch in some copies yesterday about changes in flight arrival and departure time slots listed the four affected airports incorrectly. National Airport in Washington is one of them; Newark International Airport is not.