Seán Griffin, frontman with New York Celtic rock band The Ruffians, told David Hennessy about his festive single, I’m in Love for Christmas.
Veteran New York- Irish rocker and songwriter Seán Griffin recently released the festive number, I’m in Love for Christmas.
The Christmas inspired track was written 21 years ago and serves as a prelude to his forthcoming solo album, arriving March 2026.
Seán is best known as the frontman for Irish punk outfit The Ruffians and spent 25 years fronting the hard-touring band that shared stages with Shane MacGowan’s Popes, Black 47, Enter the Haggis, Gaelic Storm, and others.
Born into a large family in Danbury, Connecticut, Griffin was steeped in Irish traditional music via his barbershop quartet-singer father and his accordionist/step-dancer mother.
Seán chatted to the Irish World about his new music including his recent festive offering.
I’m in Love for Christmas is a song you have had for many years, why wait until now to share it?
“Well when you have six kids, it takes a bit of money to get a song recorded properly.
“The song was written back in 2004 and I was on WFUV (radio).
“They have this nice Irish programme and my band The Ruffians were performing on it that morning.
“I had just met my future wife and I wrote it in the kitchen about a half hour before we left for the show.
“I quickly showed it to the guys and we gave it a go so we played it live on the radio and that was pretty much probably the only time it was really played.
“I always had it in the back of my head and I said, ‘Oh, I want to get around to this’.”
Did it always feel more to you like a Seán Griffin song as opposed to a Ruffians song?
“No doubt.
“Most of the time with The Ruffians my mother’s usually saying to me, ‘Why can’t you sing nice like you sing at church?’
“This is one of the ones where I sang it nice.
“It was just so personal to me so at the time I’m sure the guys were looking at me kind of a little crooked, ‘That’s good for you but..’”
Not for us?
You may be doing your own project but The Ruffians aren’t going anywhere, right?
“Yeah, it’s kind of a life sentence with The Ruffians.
“It’s various level of frequency but it’s a lifetime thing.
“We started back in ‘97 so we’ve outlasted most of the pubs that we’ve played in.
“We’ve outlasted most of the marriages.
“We all have kids and it’s challenging sometimes to make it work.
“We’re still playing probably 20 to 30 times a year as a band which is more than most still but we used to do 120 dates a year so it feels to me like we’ve done it as we can around our lives.
“I wanted to do a record with some of these songs and what happened is everyone’s scheduling. We were talking in April and next thing it’s just like, ‘Well, I think we could probably do it like the second week in September’.
“And I was like, ‘I just can’t really wait’.
“So I got started writing that April and with their blessing and just started kind of plugging away.”
I’m in Love for Christmas incorporates sounds evoking horse drawn carriages through central park, what does Christmas mean to you or when do you know it’s Christmas?
“We’re lucky with the snow and things like that.
“When the snow starts coming for us, you really start feeling like it’s around the corner.
“And of course the kids are disappointed if it’s not a white Christmas sometimes, if Santa’s still going to make it.
“And then obviously Christmas Eve, the full on dash of, ‘Have I wrapped everything in time?’
“Getting it under the tree with six kids is always a panic.
“There’s a tonne of little things kind of leading up to it.
“We always go to midnight mass.
“It’s always awesome.
“It’s just packed.
“That’s always wonderful.
“Father always has some food after mass and it’ll be wild.
“You’re finishing up, it’s 3.30 in the morning and you’re like, ‘I still have to get home and get kids to bed and read The Night Before Christmas’.
“Some years I feel like the kids are in bed at 4.30 and someone’s waking up 6.30 excited for Santa and it’s like, ‘Go back to bed’.”
What’s your favourite Christmas song?
“Of course the new one I just wrote,” Seán jokes.
“Christmas in Killarney was always one that was very fun growing up because my dad would always get out the Bing Crosby record, put it on the record player and he would just play that whole record again and again and again and again.
“I remember my mother one year when I was in elementary school, asking if I could learn to play it for her on the piano so that kind of became our song each Christmas.
“My mom would always kind of say, ‘Alright, Sean, go play Christmas in Killarney for your mother on the piano’.
“She still does this.
“I’d say Christmas in Killarney probably just because of the long term kind of running joke with my mom and just how it’s kind of come to be all these years.
“Fairytale of New York is such a classic.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sung that in the pub and I had an idea of doing a version of it but I wasn’t able to get it together for this year.
“I wanted to go and actually get the sound of the subways squealing and things like that to make it slightly different because it’s been done by so many people.
“No one’s going to beat Christy Moore’s cover of it and no one’s going to beat the original.
“It’s strange too with the lyrics though.
“I don’t know if they’ve changed them over there but some people can get kind of bent out of shape about that so that was another consideration.
“I mean, it’s all in good fun.
“I don’t think anyone should be bothered by it but we live in a sensitive world.
“It’s not like when we were kids.”
Didn’t you share the stage with Shane?
“We played with The Popes.
“We had a residency at Rocky Sullivan’s on 28th and Lexington.
“Back in the day Rocky’s was as big as it was.
“There was just a weekend that the Popes- Without Shane, I don’t know what was going on with Shane- Were looking to play.
“They were playing Rocky’s and we got to open for them.
“That was just amazing getting to play with them.
“Obviously they were just total class players.
“Unfortunately Shane wasn’t on that gig but he would certainly come and have pints at Rocky’s regularly.
“We played with The Wolfe Tones.
“And Derek Warfield, we played with him and his Young Wolfe Tones loads of times as well.
“We played with Martin Furey before he was in The High Kings.
“It was wild.
“He had some of his dad’s reeds that he had made himself and it was the saddest thing.
“We were playing once at Rocky’s and it was after hours 5am locked in drinking and some woman rifled through my uilleann piper’s case- I don’t know what she was looking for- and she just took the whole thing and just dumped it in the garbage.
“We picked the stuff out and we never were able to recover the reed that Finbar had made.
“But it was such a strong tone.
“It was like a really firm reed and the only version we really have of it is our Live at CBGB album with The Ruffians.
“That whole album he had that Finbar Furey reed and it’s the tone.
“It’s so awesome.
“It had a very aggressive kind of sound to it.
“I played with Martin and loads of people over the years.
“Been lucky in that regard.”
What can you tell us about the rest of the album?
“It’s a little more personal (than The Ruffians).
“Some of the songs might have suited The Ruffians but some of them just were a little more personal.
“I have is a song called Space Girls Won’t Take No For An Answer and it’s about getting abducted by space women in the middle of the night.
“It’s kind of got like a surf/sci-fi/punk kind of vibe to it.
“And it’s not that some of the Ruffians’ fans wouldn’t have been there but some of the places we play might have been like, ‘I don’t know about this’.
“So there are a couple of those that I had sitting around that I wanted to have see the light of day.
“There’s a song on there called JFK which is about the airport and it’s very much about coming over on a J1 visa in summer and summer love and then it ending, which so many people have done.
“I think that one’s going to be a big, big one in the New York Irish scene because a lot of people can relate, I think on both sides.
“Hopefully in Ireland too because a lot of people can relate.
“Maybe they went over and decided to tear it up for three months and then summer love happens and it comes and goes.”
I get the sense that New York is very proud of its Irishness..
“People are certainly proud of it.
“I mean years back we were pretty instrumental.
“St Brigid’s Church in the city was a famine church and that was built by the Irish and they were going to get rid of it.
“They were selling it for condos and we were involved in trying to help save Saint Brigid’s so there would be these fundraisers and I’d go and play sometimes with the band, sometimes with myself, to save the church, but as a famine church people literally slept in it.
“And through the restoration process, you could see all kinds of things written in Irish on the walls.
“Same thing with the Brooklyn Bridge when they were doing a restoration.
“You could see in Irish things on the stones.
“It’s one of those things.
“People left the worst times around the famine or whatever.
“I mean they left at a time and then they came to a straight up a Protestant country.
“It was an English Protestant country.
“They were absolutely hated and despised and people kind of forget that, what a barrier it was.
“And then you build all the buildings and the railroads and the bridges and you do all these things.
“People started kind of getting a foothold and getting more educated and working their way up.
“But the funny thing is the amount of abuse people took for being Irish and Catholic in this country was significant.
“And then you run across kids over here, during Celtic Tiger time and they’re flushed with cash and they’re coming over and it’s not like, ‘No Irish need apply’, people welcome you with open arms and are super friendly when you come over.
“And then you sent all the money all the years for the guns from here.
“Loads of money got raised to send over for the cause.
“And you go over there and people are like, ‘Oh no, you’re a Plastic Paddy, you’re a narrowback. You’re just a stupid Yank’.
“I can go through my own family and sit there and say of my great grandparents of the 16 of them, 14 of them were Irish,
“A lot of people in Ireland if you’re looking to that, ‘Oh well, this one’s from France’.
“You preserve when you come.
“What I think is interesting about New York too is a lot of the songs that we have and a lot of the jigs and reels that we have a lot of times are emblematic of when people might have been over so each city kind of has a set of tunes.
“Each city has its own little pocket of tunes.
“New York certainly has that and has a great history.
“I think some of the fiddle players that we have out of the Bronx are amongst the best.
“I think the Bronx style of fiddle playing is amazing.
“Denny McCarthy, obviously Eileen Ivers, just so many.
“Just so many people come out of the Bronx that I think are great.
“People are certainly proud of it.
“We have over 400,000 people of Irish descent in New York City and all I could say is I think when people come to New York, they’re very welcome. They’re very accepted and my only point would be when people head over (to Ireland), actually return the favour, know a little bit more about the history.
“I think the tendency is just to endlessly take the piss out of Irish Americans and there is an aspect of it for me which just very simply: Well what happens then if people just stopped coming over for tourism?
“What happens if they were just, ‘Alright, fine. You don’t want us’.
“What happens if the pharmaceuticals and Apple just pulled up, Facebook just pulled up and left?
“It’s what? 30% of the employment.
“There’s a symbiotic relationship and if people don’t want to respect it, then it does cut a bit both ways in that regard.
“But very proud of being Irish.
“It would come to blows as a kid.
“People in elementary school that were like, ‘Oh, what’s your name, Seen?’
“They’d get going with that and there’d be a thing and there’d always be, like, a bit of a thing between the Italians and the Irish so you’d definitely get in fights over that.
“It feels like you’re fighting.
“In some situations it’s like you’re never really accepted.
“Depending on who’s around, you’re never really an American totally because in the early days it was ‘You’re a Catholic. Can you ever really be an American? If you’re a Catholic, you’re going to be beholden to the Pope, right?’
“And then you’re dealing with the Irish: Well, you’re not really Irish.
“You’re not really an American, you’re not really Irish.
“There’s this constant, ‘What are you?’
“I think that’s where people do find their roots and their heritage and they fight for it.”
Not feeling Irish but also not feeling of the land you are born, being Irish- American in some ways sounds like the second generation in UK experience..
“I worked with an uilleann piper from the London Irish thing for a long time and he shared that.
“He shared his experience as well.
“He played in Leeson O’Keefe’s Neck over there.
“They’re a London Irish band.”
Leeson O’Keeffe passed away sadly last year..
“We joked (we were cousins).
“My mom’s surname was O’Keeffe so we just always called each other cousin.
“We did loads of shows with them over the years.
“A lot of those bands would come over: Biblecode Sundays, same thing.
“They would come over and I’d help sort them out some shows in Boston and New York and Philadelphia.”
I’m in Love for Christmas is out now.
The album is out next year.
For more information, click here.
