Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is a Pacific island in the UTC+14 time zone where New Year's Day arrives among the earliest.
Kiritimati is part of Kiribati, an island country spread across the central Pacific. Its position near the International Date Line and Kiribati's use of UTC+14 place it on the calendar's earliest civil time zone. As a result, the island is regularly mentioned in reports about the first inhabited places to welcome a new year.
The island was moved to the western side of the date line in 1995, alongside other Kiribati islands, so the country would share a calendar date across its territory. That change created the unusual situation in which Kiribati became one of the first countries to enter a new day.
“First” claims can depend on whether a source means the first country, territory, city, or inhabited location. Kiritimati is the specific island associated with this time-zone distinction, not the better-known Kiritimati name's literal meaning, Christmas Island.