Dennis Padilla. Image: Instagram/@dennisastig
Dennis Padilla once again turned emotional as he addressed his children, gifting them with his version of the holiday song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”
Through his Instagram page on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, the celebrity dad showed himself in what appears to be a home studio, standing in front of a microphone with headphones on.
Padilla was all smiles at the beginning of the song, while pictures of him with his children flash on the screen. The actor’s voice then broke as he reaches the latter part of the track, with the actor wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Dearest Diane, Luis, Daniela, Julia, Claudia, Leon, Rizzi, Gavin, and Maddie, Merry Christmas,” he said in the caption.
“Love you all mga anak. Always praying for more blessings and safety to all of you,” he stated.
Padilla’s estranged relationship with Julia, Claudia and Leon—his children with his ex-wife Marjorie Barretto—has been an open book to the public. Daniela, or Dani, is Marjorie’s daughter with Kier Legaspi but grew up while Padilla and their mother were still together.
In 2022, their strained relationship made headlines after Padilla revealed that he did not receive greetings from his children on Father’s Day.
Leon, in turn, made an open letter to Padilla and asked him to “stop resorting to public shaming when things don’t go your way.” Leon further lamented how for the previous decade, he and his siblings have been “trying so hard to slowly rebuild the bridge [Padilla] continuously burn” every time the actor talks about their private matters in public.
Nonetheless, the four of them seem to be slowly mending their relationship as Julia greeted Padilla on his birthday this year, while Leon thanked the actor for his birthday post for him.
Meanwhile, Padilla’s younger children Gavin and Maddie with his former partner Linda Marie Gorton have been residing in Australia with their mom.
Padilla reunited with the kids after four years last September. The reunion came months after Gorton revealed that she and Padilla does not have a co-parenting setup and that “consistency in child support wasn’t always the case.”