Kiritimati is the island commonly identified as one of the first inhabited places to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world’s most advanced civil time zone. Because the International Date Line bends around Kiribati’s islands, Kiritimati reaches January 1 before most other inhabited locations.
Kiribati moved its eastern islands to the west side of the International Date Line in 1994–1995, aligning the country’s calendar across its territory. The change made the Line Islands among the earliest places to enter each new day and attracted international attention during New Year celebrations.
The claim is about time zones, not a single universally recognized festival or a permanent title for the island. Time-zone definitions and comparisons can be discussed differently around the Date Line, but Kiritimati’s UTC+14 position is the key fact behind its early midnight. It is not the same island as Australia’s Christmas Island, which lies in the Indian Ocean.