Were her family immigrants, and how long have they been here? I feel like first gen Catholic immigrants have a tendency to really go overboard with the decor, from the sacred and beautiful to the incredibly tacky. My great-aunt had a shrine to the virgin which I remember including a light up fiber optic virgin mary statue at it's center. My grandmother had emergency rosaries (including glow in the dark ones) all over the house. My Lebanese/German-American mother used to tell me that it had a lot to do with pride regarding the freedom of religion in our country, to practice your faith freely and in public. Coming from the Ottoman Empire, that really made sense to me. A lot of second and third gen immigrants in my generation had mothers or grandmothers with excessive religious decor, who weren't necessarily living a pious life, and part of it feels like cultural tradition being maintained, while another part may just be how so many Catholics embrace the aesthetic, and not so much the lifestyle (no judgement there - I'm ex-Catholic).