'It's a programme I get anxious about': Creedon gearing up for Christmas radio show

Fri, 22 Dec, 2023 - 07:00

LISTENING to John Creedon reading out international messages on RTÉ Radio 1 has become part of many a Christmas morning, with the Cork broadcaster bringing a warmth and sense of Irishness to many of us both at home and far from home.

“It’s a programme I get anxious about, believe it or believe it not, I always get nervous the night before,” the Cork presenter tells The Echo. “It’s never ready. I’m always pacing the place and palpitating before I go on air.”

He remembers Christmas Day as a special day and a happy time in his childhood family home on Devonshire Street.

“When I think of Christmas as a small boy with my mammy and daddy, they were good, I have to say. I remember being in my bedroom with my brothers Cónal and Blake, we’d be chatting in the dark and someone would say, because we couldn’t sleep, ‘What’ll we talk about? We’ll talk about Christmas!’ Like, this could be in February. There was a huge anticipation, even as a child.”

He has a theory that there are two sides to Christmas, the red side and the white side.

“It’s a bit like Santa, the red and white. The red is the taillights in the traffic coming out of supermarkets, it’s the Christmas lights, it’s Santa, it’s the decorations, it’s the colour, it’s the hype, it’s the excitement, it’s all that stuff.

“And then there’s the white side, which has been eclipsed by the red side, I would say, and the white side is choirs, altar boys, snow, frost, cold, all those things, so I would like the music on the Christmas Day show to represent a fair share of white as well on the day.”

The Christian message of Christmas

He says he wouldn’t be what he calls a “holy Joe”, but the Christian message of Christmas is something to which he would be drawn.

“I wouldn’t be regular churchgoer, but if I do get a chance I’ll nip around and have a look at the cribs. It’s an opportunity to contemplate that story of a family in the Middle East being pursued and trying to find shelter.

“Every single year I do put up a crib. I don’t bother with a Christmas tree or any other decorations like that, but I bought a good crib a couple of years ago, and it’s got a little water feature and a light and everything in it!”

His four Scottish grandchildren will be over from Glasgow for Christmas, and the crib usually ends up with “Barbie and a giraffe and Action Man inside in it as well”.

With a few days to go, he’s still working on his Christmas Day playlist, and some of the songs still hit him.

“There’s maybe two or three songs that I include every single year. Ron Sexsmith has a song that comes in under two minutes and it’s called ‘Maybe This Christmas’, and it’s just so beautiful.” He says the song speaks to the longing to reconnect, especially at Christmas time.

“It might be someone you fell out with along the way, and I’m not telling anyone to do anything, but I do subscribe to the notion — I feel it — that to err is human, we’re all human, we’re all fumbling around in the dark, and to forgive is divine. It’s wonderful that a prodigal, or someone who upset you, can be welcomed home.

“Christmas does afford that opportunity, or it should do, if we come off the carousel.”

The tradition of a mid-winter feast long pre-dates Christianity, he says, being an opportunity to step back and take stock, “and see what’s in the barn, and say, yeah, that’ll see us through till March or April, so let’s make merry and give thanks, let’s keep the old folks warm and see can they get through another winter.

“Those things have not gone away, it might be covid or whatever it is this year or some other thing, but we’ll get through this, and the days will get longer and get warmer and away we go again. It’s in our DNA.”

Repertoire

He doesn’t have favourite Christmas carols, he says, but he has built up quite a repertoire over the years.

“I could name hundreds of Christmas songs, but that doesn’t mean anything. I play songs that I feel have something going on. The show is a long-distance requests programme for the Irish abroad, and everything else from the Irish abroad. It’s a musical Urbi et Orbi and it’s us, the Irish, gathering on the wireless for a couple of hours.

“I’m playing it to an Irish audience because it’s 11am and I know they’re coming from Mass or going to granny’s, or some fella’s waking up who hates Christmas but doesn’t mind yer man Creedon.

“I might play a choir like Bo Holten from Copenhagen, I might go for a Spanish choir, I was thinking Kacey Musgraves, an unlikely candidate, really, has the most beautiful version of ‘Feliz Navidad’.

“I could do anything, I could play one in Russian, usually there’s a representation of the world. It could be a Hawaiian Christmas. I could even go with something completely naff like a Bing Crosby or something, but the ones that are overplayed I avoid.”

That said, ‘Fairytale of New York’ will have to get an outing this year, he says, just to remember Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl.

“I love things like Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’, from Lieutenant Kije, a troika being a three-horse open sleigh. I’m going to draw in a lot of the white side of Christmas, maybe to complement the Ella Fitzgeralds or the Dean Martins, and I play them for familiarity’s sake or nostalgia’s sake.

The 'white side'

“It’s a very hard thing to define, but in as much as there is science behind it, that’s what it is, to some degree I’m trying to represent the white side of Christmas. So choirs, it might be something like Altan, they did some beautiful work, so did Bryan Duggan, the flautist, he did some beautiful, frosty tunes.

“‘We Follow That Star’ is another, you know it’s Christmas but it’s not going ‘Ding dong dingly ding ding’, you know?” he laughs.

“And then there’s the messages, there’s always more than I can handle, but I’ll try to get through them over the coming days. There’s always more than I can handle. That’s the nature of the business. It’d be called ‘narrow-casting’ otherwise.”

He says the Christmas show is something he feels appeals to a particular time and a particular feeling at Christmas.

“It’s a bit like my crib, in ways! It’s full of action and activity and giraffes and all of that stuff but equally I’d like to think that it’s rooted in something decent.”