The Dawn releases first-ever Christmas song in almost 40 years

The Christmas holidays are a time for families to get together and celebrate together. Happily, conflict-free, drama-free.

- Text and photos by KATHERINE MAGSANOC

As Filipinos, this is the visual we were programmed with growing up. And so the thought of celebrating Christmas away from family (or worse, solo), feels so deplorable that we almost feel ashamed to mention it.

But this is reality to some (or most) of us, and it is something that some members of the band also experienced firsthand.

The song Maki-Pasko came to be with Francis Reyes coming up with the music first—or, as he says—“the genesis of it.”

“What came to me was the foundation,” he says. “A specific set of chords.”

Francis says the band has been discussing the whole Christmas song thing for years already: “Sobrang tagal na. Baka even Teddy (Diaz, the original guitarist) days dini-discuss na nila ‘yon.”

He admits that coming up with their very own Christmas song was really hard. “I mean, what else can you sing about in terms of Christmas? Everything’s been done, right?” he quips.

Then he remembered a couple of Christmases away from home and thought of how sad it felt. So, he shared this idea about writing a song about it with the rest of the band.

“It was okay with them, so we took it from there,” he says.

Jett Pangan, The Dawn frontman, is also the resident lyricist. “Madali ako ma-inspire, based on the mood,” he says.