Kiritimati is often among the first inhabited places to welcome the New Year because it uses the UTC+14 time zone.
Kiritimati, also known as Christmas Island, is part of the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its eastern islands in 1994, allowing the country’s territory to share the same calendar date. Kiritimati consequently became one of the earliest inhabited places to reach a new day.
The island uses Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14, the world’s furthest-forward civil time zone. Its position does not mean that Kiritimati is always the first land to see sunrise in a simple geographic sense; time zones and seasonal daylight patterns make that claim more complicated.
Kiritimati’s name means “Christmas” in the local pronunciation of the English word. It should not be confused with Australia’s Christmas Island, which is a different territory in the Indian Ocean.