Christmas cards from the frontline past and present give a flavour of military life in the festive season

On it two soldiers with bayonets fixed, prepare to go over the top towards the sun and Victory – which in the event was still two years away.

The poignant card is one of 26 images from the archives of the York Army Museum, which give a flavour of life in the Army in the festive season during peacetime and war, and which are being published on social media as an online Advent calendar.

The calendar, published daily until Christmas Eve, shows that the Army can have a jolly good time. Day 16 has a four-tiered table topped with a pig’s head, laden with rabbits, turkeys and sides of beef, and dozens of bottles, entitled “The 5th Battalion Sergeants Mess Christmas Cheer 1932”.

Collections manager Aline Staes who picked out the images, said: “I just liked the fact it’s really well put together. They probably spent half a day making the table look really nice. It’s really festive.”

Fast forward 80 years and the The Royal Dragoon Guards are celebrating Christmas lunch in Afghanistan in 2012. This time there’s no alcohol on show, and the soldiers are eating off plastic trays, although the scene is still festive.

It’s the third time the museum, on Tower Street, York, which houses over 300 years of history, telling the stories of The Royal Dragoon Guards, The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire and The Yorkshire Regiment, has created an advent calendar.

Ms Staes said: “We just want to try and share our collection as much as possible.

“Being a Regimental Museum people sometimes think we only have a collection linked to war and conflict, but the Army is still there in peacetime and have lots of things going on.”

Some of the best artwork in the archives stem from the First and the Second World War, as the 1915 Christmas postcard sent from France by the 6th Division demonstrates.

The museum’s co-curator Major (Retd) Graeme Green said: “We have some fantastic artwork from WW2 in our collections – guys who were semi-professional artists and they painted their story from D-Day to VE Day using any of the mediums they could get their hands on, whether watercolour, crayon or ink.

“There’s been nobody in the archive all year and this is a nice way to make it accessible to the public.”

The museum closes on Saturday for Christmas, but should reopen on January 12.

People can visit for free as part of York Residents Weekend on January 30 and 31.