Kiribati is associated with being among the first places to welcome the New Year because of Kiritimati's time zone.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is part of the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world's furthest-forward civil time zone. As a result, midnight arrives there before it reaches most other inhabited locations, making Kiritimati a common subject of New Year's “first” lists.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its eastern islands in 1994. The change placed all of the country's inhabited islands on the same calendar day, avoiding the awkward situation in which different parts of one nation were separated by a date boundary.
“First” depends on the definition being used. Kiritimati is among the first inhabited places to enter the new year, but the exact first sunrise, settlement, or celebration can be described differently. The important fact is the island's UTC+14 civil time, not a claim that every part of Kiribati celebrates simultaneously at one instant.