I'm guessing this is an ongoing dynamic in your house - that you put a lot of effort into gestures for everyone else, but rarely get them returned, or they are returned but only in a half hearted manner?
Your advent calendar ritual seems a bit OTT for me, but then many things people on MN do seem that way to me, and I'm sure there are particular things I do that others would wonder about. Obviously your real point seems to be not that he hasn't got you an advent calendar on this one year, but that it's always you doing it? And you think it's always women that take on the responsibility for making little gestures of kindness and consideration for everyone else in the family?
It's a bit of a generalization, but it fits in with what I've seen, on the whole, amoungst friends and with research into relationships in wider society. It seems we're socialised this way. There are expectations, spoken and unspoken, that you will do this sort of thing. And there is probably more reason for women, especially with kids, to want to keep a family together, given we tend to be the ones who suffer when families don't work out. I think it's pretty awful, but it's hard to change for an individual. More women seem to be refusing to put up with it (the benefits of a legal system that ensures we aren't entirely on our own supporting children in the case of a break up and of the progress in the work place) so over time men start to realise they'll have to pick some of it up if they want the benefit of family. It's hard.
If it's any consolation, research seems to indicate that women have much happier and less lonely old ages because they are adept at relationship work and are much less likely to end up a with no contact with friends or family if they are no longer with their partner when they're old.