The rabbis hold that Succoth is the 'time of our joy.' It really is. After the work of repentance during Elul, and Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, Succoth comes as a pleasant celebration.
For our ancestors Shabbat and holidays were the only real vacations that we ever had. We did not have the luxury of going to the shore. The shore was too far away, and besides Jews was not allowed to go there. We did not have the luxury of a five-day week with two weeks of a month or so for vacation. Such ideas were not part of the culture of Eastern Europe. Most of our ancestors were too poor to go anywhere. We did not have the money to eat three meals a day, let alone funds for a week or two at a resort.
We had to make do with what we had. We had Shabbat and we had holidays. The former was our only respite from the rigors of life in anti-Semitic and primitive Eastern Europe. On that day we made sure to live like royalty. We ate well and we sang and we rested; three luxuries that we could not afford during the rest of the week.
On the three harvest holidays we followed the rules and themes those days presented. On Pesach we imagined gaining freedom and made Seders to live out that idea. We pretended that we were not in Poland or Hungry, but in Egypt and then in the desert. On Shavuot, we imagined that the heavens opened up for us, and God gave us the Torah again. We only ate dairy, recognizing that God would only appear in a peaceful world. On Succoth we made vacation homes. They only stood around for eight days, but during that time, we have the opportunity to camp out and to pretend that we could live the good life. Indeed, life during Succoth was the 'time of our joy,' just as it had been to our forefathers who also were deprived of the opportunity of the simple freedoms that are so much a part of the American experience.