Elton John opens up about son: 'I held him in my arms and cried my eyes out'

Donna Svennevik/ABC

Elton John showed off his infant son Zachary in their home for a '20/20' interview airing Friday.

The way Elton John and David Furnish see it, they lucked out when their son Zachary was born on Christmas Day last year.

Though the baby ? born via surrogate ? wasn't due till sometime later, the newborn ended up giving the famous couple a gift in more ways than one.

"We go out for lunch with friends on Christmas Eve, we go to get the few last-minute Christmas presents and we get a phone call," John told Barbara Walters in a "20/20" interview airing Friday.

After finding out the surrogate had been "rushed to the hospital," the pair made their way there, too ? only to find it deserted because of the holiday.

"It was actually ideal in terms of a secrecy standpoint ? because when we walked into the maternity ward at Cedars-Sinai, it was empty," Furnish said. "There was nobody there."

"Nobody wants to have a Christmas baby. People want to have them early or they get induced or they have a caesarean," John explained. "So from a secrecy point of view, it was incredible. It worked in our favor so well."

After Zachary was born, the legendary musician cut the umbilical cord and then both dads removed their shirts to hold the newborn to their chests for five minutes.

"They call it skin-to-skin bonding," Furnish told Walters, "because it's such a traumatic thing for a baby to come into the world, that to feel close to human flesh, to get your scent and to feel your presence ? it imprints you with the child."

John called baby Zachary his 'little pride and joy.' (Donna Svennevik/ABC)

The first-time parents, who have been together since 1993, brought their little one home a few days later.

"I held him in my arms and the Christmas carols came on the music system and I cried my eyes out," John recalled. "I needed to."

"It was just like, what more special thing could you ever want on a Christmas Day?" he wondered.

When Walters asked John, 64, and Furnish, 48, if the rumors were true that they had selected Lady Gaga to be the 4-month-old's godmother, they simultaneously answered "yes."

"When you get to the real person underneath, there's a very simple New York girl who loves her parents," John explained. "I love her to death, and a lot of people said, 'Oh, that's crazy,' but they don't know her and we do."

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