Kiritimati is the Pacific atoll famous for being among the first inhabited places to enter each new year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. It uses UTC+14, the world's furthest-forward civil time zone, so its residents reach midnight before most other inhabited locations. The atoll is therefore frequently mentioned in international New Year's coverage.
Its early position results from the date-line arrangement used by Kiribati, not from the island being geographically closest to the International Date Line in an absolute sense. Kiribati moved the date line eastward around its territory in the 1990s so its islands would share the same calendar day. Kiritimati should not be confused with Australia's Christmas Island, which is a different island in the Indian Ocean.