The "Bob Vernon" character is based on an actual radio broadcaster by the same name. Bob Vernon did afternoon drive-time radio in the 1970s on WGAR in Cleveland and WNBC in New York City. (On NBC he referred to himself as "Vernon with a V.") The character name appearance on "Frasier" was a tribute to Bob Vernon from a "Frasier"' producer to whom Bob had given encouragement early in his career.
The celebrity callers in this episode are Stephen King as Brian and Wolfgang Puck as Tom. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) tries to squeeze both men in before the news; however, they both state that they would rather wait.
Frasier states that the Christmas season doesn't really start until the parade occurs and, in fact, the Seattle Macy's Christmas parade is considered the local kickoff to the Christmas season. However, in the show, the parade takes place just several days before Christmas; in reality, it takes place every year the day after Thanksgiving. The parade concludes at Westlake Square with the lighting of the Christmas tree and the lighting of the star on top of the Macy's building.
When Niles arrives with Christmas presents, Frasier makes a bad pun about "presents of mine", and Niles zings him by saying that this is the season of "chestnuts". A chestnut is an old English term for tired, worn out jokes.
In fact, as stated in this episode, Managua, Nicaragua is not a sister city of Seattle. Seattle's sister cities are: Kobe, Japan; Be'er Sheva, Israel; Bergen, Norway; Limbe, Cameroon; Cebu, Philippines; Mombasa, Kenya; Chongqing, China; Nantes, France; Christchurch, New Zealand; Pécs, Hungary; Daejeon, Korea; Perugia, Italy; Galway, Ireland; Reykjavik, Iceland; Gdynia, Poland; Sihanoukville, Cambodia; Haiphong, Vietnam; Surabaya, Indonesia; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Tashkent, Uzbekistan.