I'm sure you've seen a 52 pick-up and heard of the ever frolicsome card game 52 pickup. The word '52 pick-up usually is connected to the word Ford, like it or not, and a card game of the same name describes a game involving someone throwing a deck of cards to the ground and then someone else having to pick them up. Whee, what fun. The game of Pick Up Sticks, using real plastic sticks, at least requires you to have  manual dexterity.

In the gorgeous book The World of Moctezuma: Aztec by Jane S. Day, there are a couple of other "52"s. For instance, page 45, figure 63, shows a drawing of four priests standing in the positions of the four directions, holding big bundles of sticks to the fire. The descriptions reads "Priests light bundles of 52 sticks to carry the new fire to Tenochtitlan (from the Codex Borbonicus). The page text reads:

"On the day of the ceremony, all fires in the valley of Mexico were extinguished...At sunset, a solemn procession of priests dressed as gods traveled to the Hill of the Star south of Tenochtitlan. Arriving at the summit, they carefully watched for the constellation Pleiades to climb to its zenith in the night sky...an honored priest started a new fire on the chest of a specially selected captive."

When they had lit a new sacred fire, runners with torches ran to the homes of the people, giving them new light. The Aztecs counted time in 52-year cycles, two cycles making a century. There is probably a connection with that number of years and the 52 sticks. Fifty-two by four brings us the the figure to 208, although I haven't quite got it yet. I just wanted you to know that I could multiply. The Aztecs also had a game, see page 39 of the same book, called patolli:

"Played with a set of smooth pebbles on a mat marked with a large X that was divided into 52 boxes, the game was similar to the modern game Parcheesi...". 

Whether this game had any connection to 52 year cycles, it does not say.

Pretty much the same thing happened in Scotland and Ireland during the festival of Beltane. All the hearth fires in the land were snuffed. Giant bonfires were lit on hilltops, and from these sacred fires, all the hearth fires were lit again with new fire. The new replaces the old, same story, different location.