Will Ferrell actually walked down Lincoln Tunnel in full costume, causing several minor accidents.

Peter Billingsley, the child actor who starred as Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" (1983), has a minor part as a supervisor elf in the North Pole toy making scenes.

A human is found as a baby by elves, is brought up by them, then finds out he is adopted and heads out to the big city to make his fortune (and there are a lot of jokes about his height thrown in). As a Terry Pratchett fan, this sounds very familiar to me. Terry has a character in his books called Carrot who was found as a baby by some dwarves and was brought up by them, then finds out he is adopted and heads off to the big city to seek his fortune. Carrot is also very innocent and has no sense of sarcasm or irony. His adopted father also says something to him about thinking he'd figure it out when he hit six feet tall.