When it comes to the whitepaper in general, I like that it makes a little more sense each time I've read it over. At first I read it because it seemed to be the logical place to start after hours of then current research. At the time I'd say 35% made sense to me and I understood about 15%. Not great but it did lend a base for me to begin with; and with it already being 8 years in there were plenty of "BTC for Dummies" style explanations to help fill in the gaps.
Now I believe it serves the purpose of a beacon of beliefs and acceptance of the system it describes. It's earned the place of a historical document and I believe the future will hold it as such, with the obvious difference being a lack of a "physical" original.
If you want to understand Bitcoin's technology and history, you'd be far better off reading all of Satoshi's forum posts, for example, which have a lot more detail.
If not already done arranging these in such a fashion to work as a FAQ and explanation topic somewhere would be a neat feature. Or maybe a webisode for the forum youtube channel.
The "next birthday", when the code was released, is more meaningful to me. As we've seen endlessly in the years since, anyone can write a paper with a bunch of ideas. Satoshi single-handedly writing Bitcoin in fully-working form is more meaningful and impressive, and it stands as a testament to the fact that even one man can start a revolution which totally changes the world if he works hard enough at it.
I have been taking steps to try and develop a basic knowledge so that code makes at least a little sense to me. It seems like another layer of comprehension is there that I could get by without but is more of a curiosity. Even without the understanding the feat in itself is one of greatness like you said; and one that anyone can appreciate if they take the time to realize the scope.