We're an anticipatory culture where we invest all our energy in the build-up to an event and have none to spend on the event itself.
Yes, it's sad. Partly because in all the pre-Christmas running around there isn't a lot of time to sit down and worship and contemplate with special joy. Just as in ordinary births, it's only afterwards that one can sit still and spend hours to gaze adoringly at the child who has come into the world.
How well I recall the blessed months after my daughter was born, when I would kill endless hours just looking at her wonderfulness. That is what we should be doing with the Christ child as well, but the demands of work, family, traffic,and volunteering make that difficult. Afterward, however, it is easier to sit by the fire and spend more time studying Scripture or talking about The Lord and holy things, examining ourselves.
I decorate my house in the colonial revival style of Williamsburg in part for reasons of taste, in part to avoid the sense of coarse commercialization of "snow"-covered plastic dinosaurs, and in part to remind myself and my family of the precious truths our faith filled colonial ancestors imparted to us. That means a lot of holly, ivy, berries, conifer, boxwood, and magnolia cut from the garden so it can stay up longer without looking weird. The tree doesn't go up until ten days before Christmas so it stays fresh longer. The tree comes down on Epiphany before it burns the house down. But for me and my house, the greenery is symbolic of the gift of everlasting life, a type of warmth in the full days I winter, so it stays up. And the small golden lights of the candles in the windows stay up until the days get perceptibly longer, which is common in the Virginia and Maryland countryside. They are not so Christmassy that people object. My neighbors think I'm a weirdo conservative Catholic gun-owner anyway so why not go with it. :-)