Creche Hay
Here’s a superstition I’d never heard of before:
During my recent trip to the USA my mom came back from church with a handful of hay she’d swiped from the nativity display in the chapel. She’d heard from someone that keeping a bit of the hay in your wallet/purse would bring you good luck all year. So she doled out bits to my dad, brother, and me – and I dutifully tucked it into my wallet where it has dried out and become flaky brown powder.
Like I said, I’d never heard of this. Ichalked it up to the general undocumented world of spells and superstitions that exist in our world. Like how putting a blank check in a plastic bag and leaving it out on the night of the new moon will make an unexpected monetary wind fall come your way. (A chain-smoking witch told me that one on the day we got our holiday bonuses back in 2004. She had cast the spell a few days before.)
Has anyone else heard of this? All my attempts to Google it have failed, and I’m curious if it’s a widespread superstition. Maybe it’s just an iteration of the general belief that church things bring good luck.
Yesterweird 
I have never heard of either of these beliefs, and I’m ruing my upbringing at the hands of secular humanist modernists, for depriving me of a chance to experience such things! … More broadly, this makes me think on something I’ve thought about a lot recently, which is how the supernatural is very present, in different ways, in lots of lives–which means (to my mind), that elements of fantasy novels aren’t fantasy at all; they’re people’s lived reality.
I suspect you didn’t miss much and were likely spared a lot of bullshit. I agree though about supernatural thinking being very close to our everyday reality. But it’s always starting whenever I encounter outright magical thinking and faith in relics and charms.