Kiritimati is widely recognized as one of the first inhabited places to enter a new year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world's most advanced civil time zone. As a result, its local midnight arrives before midnight in almost every other inhabited location.
The island's position in the time-zone system is connected to Kiribati's 1994 adjustment of the International Date Line around its eastern islands. Before that change, parts of the country were separated by a calendar date. The adjustment placed the Line Islands on the same side of the date line as the rest of Kiribati.
“First” claims can be imprecise because time-zone boundaries and inhabited locations differ. Kiritimati is nevertheless a standard answer in discussions of the first inhabited places to celebrate New Year's Eve, not because it is geographically the world's easternmost island, but because of its civil time zone.