Kiritimati is among the first inhabited places to enter the New Year because it observes UTC+14.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Its local time is Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14, the most advanced civil time zone in regular use. As a result, the island reaches midnight before most other inhabited locations when the calendar changes.
Kiritimati is an atoll in the Line Islands, not the Australian territory Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The two islands share an English name but are politically and geographically separate. Kiritimati's name comes from the Gilbertese pronunciation of “Christmas.”
The “first country” wording can be imprecise because time-zone boundaries and inhabited islands matter. Kiribati spans several time zones, and some eastern islands, including Kiritimati, enter the new year before the country's western islands. The island is famous for its date-line position, but its celebrations are local rather than a single globally standardized ceremony.