That's exactly what Sunnyvale resident Bill Baldwin has done with his annual celebration of the composer Richard Wagner's May 22 birthday.

The event has certified as an official folk holiday by Jack Santino in the book All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life.

Baldwin, a Foothill College computer programmer, holds his celebration every year on Memorial Day weekend. He calls it Ring Day because he and those who join him spend the day listening to or watching Wagner's monumental four-opera cycle, The Ring of the Niebelung, in its 15-hour entirety.

Ring Day had its genesis in Baldwin's teenage discovery of four Ring operas--Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Seigfried and Götterdamerüng (Twilight of the Gods).

"A friend of my father gave me some Wagner recordings," Baldwin says. "One of them was Ring excerpts."

But Balwin was in college when he and a friend held the first Ring Day in 1974.

"We thought it would be nice to play the whole recording end-to-end," he says. "I was studying astronomy at the time and noticed that daylight on May 22 was the same length as the Ring."

For refreshments, the friends fittingly drank--Rheingold beer.

Baldwin and his wife have continued Ring Day since 1974.

They invite a wide range of people to the annual party at their Bayview Avenue home.

"We spend most of Ring Day ignoring the music. There are certain sections we actually listen to. But generally we simply 'hang out' together."

However, Ring Day has accumulated rituals over the years.

Chief among them are the ring-shaped birthday cakes, one for each opera and the ritual burning of a cardboard Valhalla, the home of the gods which goes up in flames at the climax of the final opera.

As there are four parts to the Ring cycle, there are four parts to Ring Day.

The day begins at 5:50 a.m. with Das Rheingold, which introduces the basic premise of the operas. "Unfortunately," Baldwin says, "almost no one is ever here to hear it."

Around 8:30 a.m. the second opera, Die Walküre, begins. During what Baldwin calls the "wild days of our youth," there was an optional group shower during the storm scene at the beginning of the opera.

"I used to think Wagner was dreadfully dull," guest Mike Pelizzari says. "This is a great way to bring it to life. I learn so much here every year. I would never learn so much if I went to the opera."

Shortly after noon, when Die Walküre ends with the "Magic Fire Music," the Baldwins light birthday candles on the cakes. Initially, there was one candle for every year since Wagner's birth. (He lived from 1813-1883.) In recent years, candles have been limited to 100.

"The lighting of the candles can be quite exciting--and sometimes a little scary," Baldwin says. "The large smoke cloud released when we blow out the candles is, too." He says one year it was large enough to trigger the smoke alarm.

When Götterdamerüng begins around 4:30 p.m., the group at the party constructs the cardboard Valhalla. As the opera ends with the mythic Valhalla in flames, the cardboard Valhalla is ignited on the BBQ grill.

Surprisingly for all this combustion, there have been few mishaps.

"The most interesting," Baldwin reports, "was the year my friend built Valhalla out of flame-retardant shingle and couldn't get it to burn. He finally had to use an acetylene torch and even then it wouldn't burn."