Serving static files is more about pre-processing, or rather:

Don't do at run-time what can be done at compile-time.

This doesn't need to be any more manual that the labor involved in uploading content into a CMS or data store by another name (e.g., blog engine). It's more of a substitution of one task for another.

I prefer to think of the static HTML approach as the difference between using Makefiles versus a shell script for compiling code. Once you understand that the shell script will duplicate nuances that 'make' offers, use of Makefiles for compiling code usually gets viewed as the better approach. (There are always edge-cases, of course.)