Festival of Trees is hospital’s way of spreading yuletide cheer.

The senior citizens exercise group at Torrance Memorial Hospital started working on its Christmas tree more than three months ago.

Members sewed little, homemade aerobic outfits and biking togs, then put them on the stuffed red bears--and they gathered jump ropes to string around the tree like garlands.

“It’s all connected with (the group’s theme of) fitness and exercise,” said Maxine Gallagher of Redondo Beach.

She explained that the tree--one of 50 lavishly decorated attractions in the hospital’s fund-raising Festival of Trees--is the first one the group has created. “It’s a lot of fun, but I’m tired,” Gallagher said after several hours of decorating.

Green trees and white-flocked ones, each dripping with beads and lights and ornaments, this weekend will warm the cold concrete spaces of the first floor of the parking structure at the Torrance Marriott hotel, site of this year’s festival.

“This is our way of extending to the community season’s greetings for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” said Gary Steinhauer, the hospital’s fund development director. “Right along with that, we want people to learn about Torrance Memorial so they can use the facility in their time of need.”

The 5-year-old yuletide festival also is the hospital’s way of raising money for community service and health education programs. Epson Inc., a Torrance computer software manufacturer, underwrites more than half the cost of the festival.

With $45,000 as this year’s goal, much of the money will be raised at tonight’s auction of decorated trees, where people have been known to bid as much as $2,100 for a tree.

It costs $25 to attend the auction and dinner, and while this part of the festival is sold out, the garage-cum-forest will be open to the public Saturday and Sunday. The hospital hopes that about 8,000 people will donate $1 each to roam through the garage that has been transformed into a festive holiday forest. Everyone attending will have a chance to win one of four trees that will be given away Sunday afternoon.

Elaborate Christmas trees aren’t all that await visitors. Handcrafted Christmas decorations and baked goods will be sold, 14 choral groups will sing at different times and Santa Claus will be available for photographs.

Torrance Memorial first got the idea for the Festival of Trees from a children’s hospital in Denver. Until this year, it was held at the hospital--first in the parking garage, then in a large tent.

But hospital construction forced it to move this year, and Steinhauer said the Marriott locale is experimental. “We’re trying it to see how it works,” he said, adding that the hotel is donating the space.

People from companies, corporations and community groups, as well as creative individuals, design and decorate the trees, sometimes spending hundreds of dollars on baubles.

St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Lomita is contributing “Holy Cow, Christmas Again,” with its hand-sewn fabric cows with little tinkling cowbells grazing on the branches.

“In the Beginning, There Were Feathers,” has a Southwest Indian theme with feather wheels, mandalas and bird nests. Topping the tree is a Sioux Indian figure clad in white fringed leather and a red, green and white feather headdress crafted by Manhattan Beach doll artist Becky Zajac.

Ritas Smith & Associates, a Torrance accounting firm, is spending $800 on the tree. “I like this because it’s creative,” said Smith, who corraled several friends to help her decorate the tree. “I’m an accountant, and I don’t get to be that creative.”

Weeks of shopping and sewing parties go into fashioning the Christmas trees and boutique crafts that include pine-cone and dried-apple wreaths, nested birds, lace angels and lighted Christmas baskets.

“A lot of us meet and become friends doing this,” said Lynn Bramhall, the boutique director. “It’s a cooperative effort involving the whole community. That’s what this whole thing is all about.”