XBee using Serial rather than SoftwareSerial--how to fix
You will need an xbee breakout board Xbee breakout board or this one from Sparkfun to do that...

Make sure you check if the board comes with headers as they are not always included. Note also that the xbee socket is not a standard size - which is why you need the breakout board - it converts the XBee pin to a standard size. Here are the 2mm headers required for xbee and regular 0.1" headers required for connection to a breadboard or jumper wires etc.

Actually, I used leonardo for the very reason that you asked about in your question. Leonardo has two serial ports, one is for the usb connection you are familiar with on Uno, but it is not connected to pins 0 and 1.

The other is a completely independent serial port that is wired to pins 0 and 1 on leonardo.

So on Leonardo, you can do Serial.println("Debug msgs"); and Serial1.println("xbee messages"); (note the digit 1 in Serial1). Of course other platforms such as Mega also can be used in the same way.

I am assuming you already have some sort of an XBee shield that allows you to plug the XBee directly into your Uno. The beauty of the Leonardo is that you can continue to use that sheild. The XBee will "automatically" be connected to Serial1.

FWIW, i had all sorts of trouble with s/w serial. I couldn't get it to work with my XBees at all. I could never work out why it did not seem to work.

As soon as i moved to leonardo, it worked like a charm.