Kiritimati, in Kiribati, is located at the UTC+14 time-zone offset during New Year's celebrations.
Kiritimati is also called Christmas Island and is part of Kiribati's Line Islands. Its civil time is Line Islands Time, which is fourteen hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. Because the International Date Line bends around national territories, the island reaches a new calendar date earlier than places at lower offsets.
This location is why Kiritimati is frequently described in media as one of the first inhabited places to welcome a new year. The wording matters: “first” depends on the definition being used, and the sequence includes other Pacific islands and territories as clocks move westward around the planet.
Kiritimati is not the Australian Christmas Island, which lies in the Indian Ocean and uses a different time zone. The two islands share an English name but are separated by thousands of kilometers.