Joe Christmas is a fictional character, one of the central characters in the 1932 novel Light in August by William Faulkner. Raised in an orphanage, Joe Christmas knows little about his own identity. While he is presumably both black and white, Joe Christmas appears to be mostly white; in fact, there is no certainty that he is black at all, though he identifies himself as such.His search for racial identity is central to the work. His initials allude to Jesus Christ. One critic described him as the loneliest character in American literature. Joe Christmas (named after the character) was also the name of a little-known lo-fi rock band signed to Tooth and Nail Records. Christmas, JoeJoe Christmas