John Creedon on 30 years of Christmas presenting: 'I don't get nervous on air - but I do today'

THE STREETS OF Cork city are mostly empty when John Creedon travels into the RTÉ studio in Cork for his annual live broadcast on Christmas day.

For the most part everyone is at home, basking in the afterglow of the opening of presents, or beginning dinner preparations.

There are seagulls picking at the remains of yesterday night’s takeaways, and maybe one or two solitary figures passing by out for a walk.

Except one year, he did have an encounter of sorts on the way in:

“I remember seeing a guy on St Patrick’s Bridge, and he’d half a sliced pan with him. I’d seen him before, actually, working in the Turkish barbers. And anyway I saw him standing there feeding the gulls.

“It was, what, 8.30 am, 9 am on Christmas morning. So it seemed obvious to me that he was a single man, probably living in a bedsit or an apartment. He might not have been feeling particularly sad, but I just felt at that moment when I saw him standing alone on the bridge, and I was the only other person around, and he was methodically breaking up the bread for the birds.

“It made me think of that connection between humans and nature, and of other people, people abroad on their own, whatever it might be, of all those people on Christmas day. I can get a lump in the throat about that stuff,” he mused. 

It is something the veteran presenter is keenly aware of when he approaches his work at that time of year: there will be happy families listening; relatives on their way to someone else’s house for the celebrations, but there will also be people who are working all day, and people who are on their own.

A long career on air

Creedon has been broadcasting since 1987 and generally speaking he does not get nervous when the little light switches on his studio to indicate that he is ‘ON AIR’, but he does get nervous on Christmas morning.

“Why is that? I don’t know why, because for me, radio is like falling off a log.

“I switch it on, talk to folks, do my best, and that’ll be grand. But on Christmas day, maybe it’s because it’s a different sort of time.. But it’s mostly to do with the music, it’s tricky.

“I want a gender balance, I want to get some Irish music in, and then I’ve always – all my life – veered on the side of the eclectic, it’s what interests me, so I want to get an ethnic balance as well, so I’ll be playing Mele Kalimaka, a Hawaiian Christmas song, and I’ll be playing two short beauties in there from a Norwegian choir – now it’s actually a children’s choir, but it’s stunning stuff…”

The 67-year-old Cork man is for many the quintessential, easy listening melodic voice of RTÉ Radio One.

He’s also become a steady companion to people on Christmas day for, he suspects, at least 30 years.

The origins of Creedon’s Christmas

He cannot remember if the live show was his idea or not but he remembers that initially it was called ‘Crotchedy Christmas’ (‘I did it with the concert orchestra and it was classical music and all that stuff so we called it crotchedy, as in crotchets and quavers’), and it then became ‘Creedon’s Christmas’, and he had a very clear idea for what he wanted it to be.

“I wanted to keep it very, very simple. There are lots of specials made, a lot of documentaries traditionally that go out over Christmas, and it’s probably outdated now as an idea but we wanted to do something that would be a focal point for the Irish abroad.

“Even at that time, before internet listening was huge, we’d have people tuning in from the States and in Australia, but that has since mushroomed. I discovered just how big it was when Sinead O’Connor died, it amazed me the amount of people living across the world who found RTÉ Radio One that day.

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“We had people texting in to say: ‘Hello Ireland, we love this girl, from Germany’, or ‘This woman meant so much to me’ from somewhere else.

“So it’s huge now but back then we felt we were trying this out. I was trying to do long distance dedications. We’d have someone write in to say, ‘Hello, I’m in Melbourne with my Australian wife and our eight-week-old baby, we can’t be at home in Ireland, but we want to say hello’, you know?” Creedon recalls.

While the way that people communicate has changed radically since then, the circumstances haven’t; many Irish people are still living abroad and know their loved ones will be tuned into the radio on Christmas day.

“We get lots of things now though. I get requests from fishermen on tuna boats off the gulf of Mexico with a song request, and there’s this one guy who drives a tram in Stockholm, in a funny way these people have become regulars,” he said.

“There’s a woman, I think she’s an academic, and she’s in Adelaide University and when the clocks change, she’ll send me photos of palm trees. There’s all those people, but increasingly, there are new people too,” he said.

Creedon explained that as Ireland’s population is changing, it’s people living abroad getting in touch with their family who have chosen to come and work here, rather than the other way around.

“We have the families of Filipino nurses who are working here who want to get in touch with their mum on Christmas day, to send a message through the radio. So there’s almost a Santa Claus element to it, I feel like the middle man between these people,” he said.

The two sides of Christmas

Does Creedon actually like Christmas? Yes and no.

“I think it has two sides. There’s a red side and a white side. For me, the red side is like Santa, Christmas shopping, it’s sometimes anger, it’s red lights, tail lights and cars backed up in traffic, and queues. The commercial and the busy side I suppose.

“And then there’s a white side. For me that would be candles, the crib, the church services. But beyond those it’s snow, nature, time to reflect. I like to try and play music that reflects that side, or invites people into it,” he said.

The red side of Christmas – the busyness – has grown exponentially since Creedon’s Christmas started. Surely now it’s harder than ever to get people to slow down and listen?

“There’s as many people listening as ever though. And there are lots of people out there who are looking for connections where they might not have it on that day. I’m always mindful of people being on their own. I don’t say it in an obvious way, but I will always say we’re thinking of you today.

“One way of doing that is the fact that I’m on my own too. In other words, I’m not interviewing anybody. There’s no… it’s not ‘John and Tom bringing you Christmas hits’ or ‘here’s John with all these people’. It’s very much me with a box of records that I’m sharing with all my friends. There’s one person on this side of the mic, and hopefully presenting the music in a way that’s sensitively put together,” he said.

John aims to play a mix of music that can speak to people from all walks of life, especially on Christmas day:

“What I mean is there has to be balance. So if it’s fishermen on a boat, or Tom who is on the road who has to work on Christmas day, or someone who usually spends it alone, I’m on my own too, and yet we’re together, and there’s a song here that will mean something to you, you know what I mean?”

*Creedon’s Christmas will air on RTÉ Radio 1 on Christmas Day at 11 am.

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