'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.