Kiritimati is often described as one of the first inhabited places to enter a new calendar year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world's most advanced standard time offset. Because of that position, Kiritimati reaches midnight before most other inhabited locations when the calendar changes.
The island is a raised coral atoll and is geographically much closer to the International Date Line than its clock position might suggest. Kiribati moved the date line's effective position for its eastern islands in 1995 so that the country could share the same calendar date across its territory. That change helped give the Line Islands their early position in global New Year coverage.
“First” claims depend on definitions. Kiritimati is not necessarily the first land anywhere, and nearby uninhabited or differently classified locations may be discussed in comparisons. The precise claim here concerns an inhabited island using the UTC+14 civil time zone.