Christmas in America is only one-day event: Dec. 24th is a normal working day, as well as Dec. 26th (students of course have the winter breack). The Christmas Eve is a feast dinner, but not at the scale as in Poland, with 12 dishes and lot of traditions. The normal dinner is turkey and ham, as in Thanksgiving. You can see houses colorfully lit, Christmas trees and decoration, but again not as much as in Europe.
It is more common to hear "Happy holidays" than "Merry Christmas", and needless to say, when people say "holidays" they don't have necessarily in mind "Holy Days". There are two clear trends: the "PC" trend (see below in the Pocket Dictionary of Modern Acronyms) whose followers use the "happy holidays" greeting, and the "Christmas" trend, which is getting momentum (for example, families get together to sing Christmas carols; you can also google the phrase "Put Christ back into Christmas" and see the millions of results).
Americans spend the last day of the year normally at home, watching a movie or having dinner with friends at the most, i.e. with less exuberance and craziness than in Europe. Whether it is due to the present crisis or because of puritanism, it is difficult to say.
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