Kiritimati is commonly described as one of the first inhabited places to welcome the New 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 civil time zone. Because clocks there are far ahead of most locations, the island reaches January 1 before many other inhabited areas, making it a recurring subject in New Year's coverage.
The island's name comes from the pronunciation of “Christmas” in the Gilbertese language. It should not be confused with Australia's Christmas Island, which lies in the Indian Ocean and uses a different time zone. Kiritimati is a coral atoll with a large lagoon and is known for seabirds, fisheries, and tourism as well as its calendar position. “First” claims can depend on the definition used: some uninhabited or sparsely inhabited islands share the same offset, while international reporting usually highlights Kiritimati as an inhabited destination welcoming the new year earliest.