At the outset, I must say that I agree with the question. (More on this later.)
The final paragraph of the OP, however, struck me as rather offensive.
Why would I “simply dismiss” a reasonable question about my lifestyle as “simply coming from someone who says ‘Sukkot’ instead of ‘Sukkos’?”
The insinuation seems to be that “big-city” Jews who say “Sukkos” are not sufficiently honest with themselves for even the slightest introspection, that, in their arrogance, they would dismiss the question because they consider the one who posed it to be morally inferior due to some trifle detail in religious culture.
Those who dwell in the “shtetle”, on the other hand, apparently are of a higher caliber, and are spiritual enough to perceive the materialistic character of those “big-city amenities,” as well as to appreciate the perspective of those who say “Sukkot”.
Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but this is how it came across to me, and I resent the implication.
Now, it so happens that I, too, live in a small, “out of town” community, and I agree that the simpler lifestyle in my community is preferable to the materialism which has unfortunately crept into the lives of my brethren in the N.Y. / N.J. region. I do not understand why this has been allowed to happen, and I think that any objective observer would concur that it is unhealthy. This is part of the equation which led me to choose to raise my children in my present community, despite depriving them of the advantages of growing up “in town.”
That said, I must admit that if I would be living in such a community, I don’t know that I would have the moral clarity to recognize the slow trend towards materialism in my own lifestyle, let alone that of my community as a whole.