Laurel, welcome to the Sphere. I don't know whether it's a particularly American penchant. It strikes me as being a characteristic of the English language. It is really rather difficult to think of a noun (at least, a simple rather than a compound noun) that isn't also used as a verb. Just looking at the table in front of me, with its books, pens and papers, and then at the room, with its chairs, tables, carpet, curtains... There isn't a single one of those words that can't also be used as a verb (book a room, pen a sonnet, paper the walls, chair a meeting, table a motion, carpet a room, curtain something off...).
Of course, the objection against "gift" as a verb, is why use it in place of the verb "give" (from which it presumably derives)? The answer may be because "give" isn't always considered quite enough to render the concept. This thought comes to me by back-translating from Italian. Italian has the verb "dare", which translates as "give", but it also has the verb "regalare", which means specifically to give something as a present (rather than just handing it over or consigning it). When I'm translating from Italian I tend to translate "regalare" just with the word "give", since it usually sounds awkward to say "he gave me a box of chocolates as a present..." But who knows, I may one day be tempted to use the verb "gift" to make the distinction clear. Probably not for a while yet, since I too have a pretty strong streak of linguistic snobbery (or pedantry, or curmudgeonliness, or whatever you want to call it). But it's interesting to know the possibility is there.
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