Kiritimati is the Kiribati island known for being among the first inhabited places to enter each New Year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, lies in the central Pacific and uses UTC+14, the world's furthest-forward civil time zone. As a result, its midnight arrives before midnight in nearly every other inhabited location. News reports often feature its New Year's celebrations as an early glimpse of the new calendar year.
The island is part of the Line Islands of Kiribati. Its name comes from the Gilbertese pronunciation of “Christmas,” reflecting its discovery by Europeans on Christmas Eve in 1777. Kiritimati is also the largest coral atoll in the world by land area.
The date-line story can cause confusion because the International Date Line bends around national territories. Kiribati moved its Line Islands across the date line in 1995 so that all of its islands would share the same calendar date. Kiritimati is therefore an early inhabited location, not necessarily the first point on Earth to experience midnight.