Publishing content for a future event

When's the best time?

[badass101]

I run a website related to love and romance articles.
I want to make sure a bunch of Valentines day related articles are in the SERPS for when that time of year rolls around (so late Jan, early Feb next year)

Should I publish the content now but not place it on the frontpage of my site - the the SE's will see it, digest it and rank it. I could then switch it to link from the frontpage in the run up to the day.
I'm not sure if the fact that by Feb the content isn't 'fresh' will make a difference to ranking?

Or, should I set my CMS up to publish the article at the end of Jan and hope that it's indexed in time?

Thanks for your help

Craig

[mcavic]

I would publish it now and link to it, but not necessarily from the home page. The SE's need time to get ahold of it, and I believe old established pages are better than brand new pages.