Kiritimati is the Pacific island often cited as the first inhabited place to enter a new calendar year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, belongs to Kiribati and uses UTC+14, the world’s furthest-forward civil time zone. Because the International Date Line was shifted eastward around Kiribati in the 1990s, the country’s Line Islands began a new calendar day ahead of many other populated places.
The island lies in the central Pacific and is part of the Line Islands. Its name is the Gilbertese rendering of “Christmas,” reflecting the pronunciation of the English word in the local language. Kiritimati should not be confused with Australia’s Christmas Island, which is a different island in the Indian Ocean.
“First” depends on the definition used: time-zone rules identify the earliest civil midnight, while the inhabited places at that longitude may celebrate at different scales. Kiritimati’s UTC+14 position is the key reason it appears in global New Year lists.