Kiritimati is often described as one of the first inhabited places to welcome each New Year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of Kiribati in the central Pacific. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world's furthest-forward civil time zone. Because of that time-zone position, midnight arrives there before it does in almost every other inhabited location.
The island lies east of the International Date Line geographically, but Kiribati moved the date line's practical position for its eastern islands in 1995. That change placed the Line Islands on the same calendar day as the rest of Kiribati and made the country notable in global New Year coverage.
“First” claims can depend on whether a source means a country, an inhabited settlement, or an uninhabited territory. Kiritimati is the specific inhabited island usually named in this context, rather than the entire nation of Kiribati.