Kiritimati is widely known 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, which is UTC+14, the world’s furthest-forward civil time zone. As a result, midnight arrives there before it does in most other populated places.
The island is not the same as Australia’s Christmas Island, which lies in the Indian Ocean and uses a different time zone. The similar names are a frequent source of confusion. Kiritimati’s name comes from the Gilbertese pronunciation of “Christmas.”
Time-zone claims about the “first” place can depend on whether the question means the first territory, the first city, or the first permanently inhabited location. Kiritimati is a standard answer for an inhabited location, while nearby Kiribati islands and other Pacific territories may be mentioned in more precise comparisons.