Your mother sounds like me! I love buying gifts. We never had allowances either back in the 40s and 50s. My parents didn't earn a whole lot of money but we got along fine. Of course, I had a grandmother who spoiled me...
Interesting! My mother is a dear, really (although she is good at grudges), and pretty much an outgoing party girl. Sort of the ideal hostess, if you will - good at listening, engaging people, etc, as well as laughing alot. The "gift thing" just seems to come naturally from that!
Mom will get me 15 gifts (even now) and meanwhile, I have hardly anything. I tell her not to do that; it makes me feel bad! Of course she says that's not the point and she's not counting - but still! I should say, she did this even LONG ago when she was working all the time! How do you have the time or ideas, much less the money?
As a result, though, Christmas is wonderful - which true to her Bavarian roots, is "extremely important"! (As it was to her mother, who also had Christmas stuff everywhere and gave everyone something - 19 grandchildren!) I wish I had all that energy.
BTW, I'm an "'80s Child", GenX, but as I said my family didn't do allowances, nor "rewards" for good grades. It was simply expected as a natural ("you won't get blatant rewards all the time in real life" - very true). We might get a gift of money for Xmas/BDay. I don't know if that was common in your day or not. But I remember even as a youngster wondering why some of my friends or others got money for grades; even then I was rather....appalled! Not envious; I thought it was strange! ;-D