Kiritimati is commonly described as the first inhabited place to welcome each New Year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. It uses Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14, the world's furthest-forward civil time zone. Because of that time-zone position, midnight arrives there before it does in most other inhabited locations.
The island lies in the central Pacific and is famous for its enormous lagoon and important seabird populations. Its name comes from the Gilbertese pronunciation of “Christmas,” reflecting the island's discovery by Europeans on December 24, 1777.
The phrase “first in the world” is a time-zone convention rather than a claim that every resident celebrates at precisely the same moment. Kiribati shifted the International Date Line eastward in 1995, placing its eastern islands on the same calendar day as the rest of the country and strengthening this New Year distinction.