Which country will celebrate New Year 2023 first?

Not everyone will celebrate the beginning of the New Year at the same time, and some countries will do it when you're fast asleep. So, which country in the world will go into the brand-new 2023 first?

What? The New Year, which we celebrate as the clock strikes midnight on January 1, is dependent on something called the International Date Line. 

What is the International Date Line? The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line that extends from the North Pole to the South Pole through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The line is not straight. It was made to cross through the ocean so that countries don't have to go through multiple date-zones within the space of a few kilometres.

LiveScience explains that when you cross the International Date Line, depending on which direction you are heading, you gain or lose a day. When moving westward, you gain a day; when travelling eastward, you lose a day.

For example, if a traveller goes eastward across the Pacific Ocean on June 25 from Wake Island to the Hawaiian Islands, they will revert to June 24 as soon as they cross the IDL. They will arrive in Wake Island on June 26 if they are travelling in the opposite way.

Although the traveller seems to move backwards or forward in time, there's no physics-defying magic going on here. The International Date Line is based on a rational, practical system of universal timekeeping that takes into account the movement of Earth around the sun. 

So, now that we have made some sense of the IDL, let's look at the first country that will celebrate the New Year: 

Kiritimati, which is a part of the Kiribati Islands, will be the first city to welcome 2023. Kiribati is a Pacific Ocean island country with 811 square kilometres (313 square miles) of land spread across 33 atolls and coral islands.

Kiribati's land surface consists primarily of the points of underwater volcanoes that protrude for an average elevation of three metres and barely a few feet above the ocean in certain locations.

So, according to simple geography, when Kiribati will celebrate New Year, it will be just 3.30 pm on December 31 in India, according to the IDL (January 1 is Sunday, by the way, and at 3.30 pm Saturday we will be probably busy planning our New Year). 

Here are the next few countries (check out India at the end): 

Now, who will be the last country to celebrate the New Year? 

The New Year ultimately comes full circle after travelling all around the world. Howland and Baker Islands, territories of the United States, are the last places on Earth to celebrate the New Year (5.30 pm Sunday IST).

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