By Alisa Moyer
At Anthem Classical Academy, Valentine’s Day in classical Christian education is an opportunity to help students understand love as God defines it: ordered, sacrificial, and rooted in Christ. With February 14th approaching, I’d like to take a moment to share how Valentine’s Day is understood and recognized at Anthem, and why we approach it with intention.
Why Valentine’s Day Matters in Classical Christian Education
In a culture that often treats this holiday as either overly sentimental or purely commercial, we see it as a small but meaningful opportunity—an opportunity to help our students order their loves rightly and to point their hearts toward something far deeper.
At Anthem, we want our students to know that love begins with God Himself. Scripture tells us plainly, “We love because He first loved us.” Any understanding of love that does not start there will always fall short.
St. Valentine and the Christian Meaning of Love
So before we talk about how we celebrate Valentine’s Day, it’s worth taking a quick look at where it all began.
Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that feels familiar, but when you pause to ask, “Who was St. Valentine, really?” the answer is surprisingly unclear. In fact, historians aren’t even certain there was only one St. Valentine. Dozens of men named Valentine lived between the second and eighth centuries. At least one of them was a Christian priest who was martyred under the Roman emperor Claudius II around A.D. 269—on February 14. Others may have been bishops or believers martyred in different regions of the empire. Over time, their stories blended together, layered with legend and folklore.
What does seem clear is this: whoever St. Valentine was, he was a martyr. He bore witness to Christ in a world that demanded allegiance to the Roman gods and to the emperor himself. And that witness often came at the cost of one’s life. To be a martyr was to love Christ more than comfort, safety, or even life itself.
Over the centuries, however, the Church’s remembrance of Valentine slowly shifted. Medieval poetry and courtly traditions began linking his feast day with romantic affection. Later, with the rise of printing and commerce—especially in Victorian England—Valentine’s Day evolved into the card-giving, flower-sending celebration we recognize today. Those things are not inherently wrong, but they are not where love begins. When the story of Valentine—the Christian martyr—is separated from Christ, love becomes smaller, flatter, and more self-focused.
Christ’s Sacrificial Love as Our Model
Because at its heart, Valentine’s Day was never meant to be defined by romance alone, but by sacrifice. Not by affection alone, but by faithfulness unto death. And that kind of love is most clearly revealed not in St. Valentine, but in Jesus Christ Himself.
Jesus tells His disciples in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” These words are not poetic sentiment. They are a promise Jesus fulfills at the cross. Christ’s love for us is not abstract or emotional—it is costly. He willingly laid down His life so that we might live, so that we might be reconciled to God, and so that we might learn how to love rightly in return.
That is the love we want our students to know.
How We Observe Valentine’s Day at Anthem
Rather than hosting traditional Valentine’s Day parties, our Grammar School teachers will use this week to read the story of St. Valentine, to open Scripture together, and to help students reflect on what sacrificial and brotherly love truly look like in daily life.
Students will exchange handwritten notes with each of their classmates—not store-bought cards, but thoughtful words of encouragement. In grades three through five especially, students will be encouraged to name virtues they see in one another. This is a small but powerful practice: learning to notice goodness, to speak it aloud, and to give without expecting anything in return.
We’ll keep the day simple. There may be a small treat or shared joy, but no parties and no fanfare. Our goal is not to reject celebration, but to redeem it—to help students see that love is first something we give, not something we consume. We are training hearts to love as Christ loves—to give rather than grasp, to encourage rather than compete, to see one another as neighbors to be cherished, not audiences to impress.
Partnering with Parents in Formation
Our hope is for our students to grow up knowing Jesus Christ, loving Him sincerely, and allowing His sacrificial love to shape how they treat one another—at school, at home, and long after they leave Anthem. But this is not a work the school can do alone.
We are deeply grateful to partner with you as parents in this formation. The conversations you have at the dinner table, the way you speak about love and sacrifice in everyday moments, and the example you set in how you love one another all reinforce what your children are learning here. When school and home are aligned, those lessons take root far more deeply.
This Valentine’s Day, we’re not asking students to ignore love. We’re inviting them to behold its truest form: a love that lays itself down, a love that redeems, a love that first loved us. And we invite you to join us—by helping your children reflect on Christ’s love for them, by encouraging simple acts of kindness and generosity at home, and by pointing them, again and again, to the One who loved them first.
It is our prayer that as our students learn to love one another well, surrounded by a community of faithful families, they will come to know and love Jesus Christ—and carry His love with them for the rest of their lives.