If earth’s rotation is 365,25 days this means that the first year December 31st at 23:59 will look like an early afternoon; on year 2 it will look like noon and year 3 it will look like a morning (since we have 18 hours to spare).
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Clocks describe the cycle of days, not years. At 11:59 pm on NYE (and every day of the year) it’s night time, because that’s what 11:59 pm means. A year and a day are two separate measurements of time describing two unrelated motions of the planet.
What is actually happening at year 1 at 11:59 pm on NYE is that the planet hasn’t *quite* finished it’s trip around the sun yet. That’s okay though. We give it a participation trophy and start a new calendar year anyway. It finishes at 6 am on 1/1, but we pretend it happened at midnight. Who can tell anyway? Well, after a few years, we’d actually start being able to tell, because seasons and star charts would stop lining up, so every 4 years we add an extra day, because otherwise, on year 4 at 11:59 pm on NYE the earth would have another whole day’s worth of travel to finish it’s trip.
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