Kiritimati Kiritimati Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name "Kiritimati" is a respelling of the English word "Christmas" in the Kiribati language, in which the combination "ti" is pronounced "s", and the name is thus pronounced . The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world, about ; its lagoon is roughly the same size. The atoll is about in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over . Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land
Kiritimati area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands. It lies north of the Equator, south of Honolulu, and from San Francisco. Kiritimati Island is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience the New Year (see also Caroline Atoll, Kiribati). Despite being east of the 180 meridian, a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line by the Republic of Kiribati moved Kiritimati to west of the dateline. Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by