The iron golem attacks skeletons. Skeletons, when aiming at the golem may hit nearby creepers. The creeper then targets the skeleton, gets close, and blows up. Maybe the creeper blows up nothing big, or maybe it blows up a bunch of chests and the player isnt nearby to fix it.

One of the core principles of Minecraft (read to us from the minecraft handbook during Minecon 2020) was that "Bad things happen, and it's usually the player's fault". "One practical example is how iron golems ignore creepers, because otherwise the creeper would explode and destroy buildings without player interaction", Which is exactly whats happening here.

I was afk for a few minutes, iron golems spawned due to a nearby village, and I got back and there were about 6 creeper holes in my land. What's up with that?